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Tinkle   /tˈɪŋkəl/   Listen
Tinkle

verb
(past & past part. tinkled; pres. part. tinkling)
1.
Make or emit a high sound.  Synonyms: chink, clink, tink.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Tinkle" Quotes from Famous Books



... The sky was lighted only by the afterglow of the red, sunken sun; the evening breeze carried along in the warm air the perfume of the jasmine flowers and orange groves in bloom, and no sound was heard but the music of guitars and castanets, mingled sometimes with the faint tinkle of ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... Inferno. There was almost no conversation; only once in a while was heard a remark, in a whisper or an undertone, addressed by a player to his neighbor; the only sound was that short, dry rustle of the cards and the crackling of new bank notes, or the tinkle of gold coins making their way round the table from the bank to the players, and from the players back ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... was the empty bowl in which the concierge had brought me my and the fragment of croissant which I had not had appetite enough to eat. I heard the concierge in the next room emptying my bath. There was a tinkle at my bell, and I left her to open the door. In a moment I heard Stroeve's voice asking if I was in. Without moving, I shouted to him to come. He entered the room quickly, and came up to the table ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham

... escape notice. Often at night, when all were asleep, he would steal away to the garret and work at the spinet, mastering difficulties one by one. The strings of the instrument had been wound with cloth to deaden the sound, and thus made only a tiny tinkle. ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... of summer, touching the parks with the grey bloom of mist, the beech-trees with russet, the oak-trees with gold. Up on the heights, battalions of black pines witnessed the change, themselves unchangeable. Either country was spanned by a cloudless sky, and in either arose the tinkle of ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster

... beguiled each reluctant step of his ascent: the tinkle of a piano accompaniment to a roaring jovial chorus from the canteen assuring him with plaintive, but futile ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... she was told that Miss Oldcastle could not be seen, but, after sending up her card and waiting a few moments in the hall before a desk which reminded her of a gilded squirrel-cage, she was escorted to the elevator and borne upward to the ninth landing. Here, in response to the tinkle of a little bell outside of a door, she was ushered into a reception room which was so bare alike of unnecessary furniture and of the Victorian tradition to which she was accustomed, that for an instant she stood confused by the very strangeness of her surroundings. Then a charming ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... never-to-be-forgotten dance that had been the talk of three continents. There was no spotlight to follow her sinuous, scantily clad figure as it spun and leaped and glided about the dim, starlit Green; there was no blare of brass and cymbals, nor the haunting wail of flageolets,—only the tinkle of mandolins and Spanish guitars to guide her bewildering feet,—and yet she had never ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... A cry of horror ascended from the boats. They had never seen the princess go down before. Half the men were under water in a moment, but they had all, one after another, come up to the surface again for breath, when,—tinkle, tinkle, babble and gush, came the princess' laugh over the water from far away. There she was, swimming like a swan. Nor would she come out for king or queen, chancellor or daughter. But though she was obstinate, she seemed more sedate ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various

... dreadful sound between a moan and strangled cry; it almost seemed as if he thought that there were others by him beside Elzevir and me, and was shouting to them for help. The sun had risen, and his first rays blazed on a window far away in the west on top of Portland Island, and then there was a tinkle in the inside of the ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... had been hoisted into the mow, and Callie had even humped up the fragrant hay to mattress his bedroll. A window was open to the night, and as Drew stretched out wearily, he could hear the distant tinkle of a guitar, perhaps from the Four Jacks. Somewhere a woman began to sing, and the liquid Spanish words ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... dramatic pose of his legs, 'Archibald is the soul of discretion. Compared to him, an Egyptian mummy is a pithy paragrapher. Mes amis, Archibald's is just across the bridge, and I can assure you that the Twilight Tinkle, in which I have the honour to have collaborated, is guaranteed to change the most elongated countenance of glum into a globular surface ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... stone bridges where the water lapped with little mouthing tongues at the walls, and the tall, gloomy buildings almost met overhead, so that only a tiny strip of star-buttoned sky showed between. And from dark windows high up came the tinkle of guitars and the sound of song pouring from throats of silver. And so we came to our hotel, which was another converted palace; but baptism is not regarded as essential to salvation in ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... star shining through the leaves of a poplar, like a diamond in a woman's tresses; and under the window the black stretch of the lawn crossed by a band of a lighter shade, which was the sand of the path. The only sound to be heard was the faint tinkle of the water falling ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... church spread across the river. He was pushing the stern of the boat foremost so that he could feast his eyes. He was making so little speed that the only sounds were the choked sob of the water where the boat cleaved it gently and the tinkle of the drops that fell from the lazy oars with something of the delicate music of the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... the bells— Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars that oversprinkle All the heavens seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight— Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... Greek poets, and up and down the Anthology, are charming bits of rurality, redolent of the fields and of field-life, with which it would be easy to fill up the measure of this rainy day, and beat off the Grecian couplets to the tinkle of the eave-drops. Up and down, the cicada chirps; the locust, "encourager of sleep," sings his drowsy song; boozy Anacreon flings grapes; the purple violets and the daffodils crown the perfumed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... Mr. E. van Cortlandt Wynne, sitting at a desk in his Thirty-seventh Street house, was aroused from his meditations by the gentle tinkle of a bell. He glanced up, arose, and went up the three flights of stairs to the roof. Half a dozen birds rose and fluttered around him as he opened the trap; one door in their cote at the rear of the building was closed. ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle

... flight Hugh's conductor paused, and finding a piece of cord protruding from a hole in a door, pulled it. A slight tinkle was heard within, and a few moments later the sound of wooden shoes was ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux

... He would return in half an hour—or in less. He walked away and I sat there alone, conscious, on the dark dismantled simplified scene, in the deep silence that rests on American towns during the hot season—there was now and then a far cry or a plash in the water, and at intervals the tinkle of the bells of the horse-cars on the long bridge, slow in the suffocating night—of the strange influence, half-sweet, half-sad, that abides in houses uninhabited or about to become so, in places muffled and bereaved, where the unheeded sofas and patient belittered tables seem (like the disconcerted ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James

... make and John felt its truth, but he atoned for it by complete silence while they listened to many tunes, mostly American, played on the mouth-organ. John's mind continually went back to the great republic overseas, so safe and so sane. While he was listening to the thin tinkle in the dark and snowy trench his friends were going to the great opera house in New York to hear "Aida" or "Lohengrin" maybe. And yet he would not have been back there. The wish did not occur to him. Through the dark and the snow he saw the golden hair and the deep ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Then I got my pole of mountain ash, made hook and line ready, dug some worms and went fishing. I cared not so much for the fishing as for the solitude of the woods. I had a bit of thing to do. In the thick timber there was a place where Tinkle brook began to hurry and break into murmurs on a pebble bar, as if its feet were tickled. A few more steps and it burst into a peal of laughter that lasted half the year as it tumbled over narrow shelves of rock into a foamy pool. Many a day I had sat fishing for hours ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... he heard the tinkle of the bell and went to receive his message and order a car for morning. Then he returned to the merciful darkness of night, and paced the driveway until light came peeping over the tree tops. He prepared breakfast and an ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... knew the solace of movement. And perhaps, without being conscious of it, she was influenced by the soft beauty of the evening, by the peace of the hills. But as they crossed the ravine they heard the tinkle of bells, and a procession of goats tripped by them, following a boy who was twittering upon a flute. He was playing the tune of the tarantella, that tune which Hermione associated with careless joy in the sun. He passed down into the shadows of the trees, and ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens

... river, Their bells, which tinkle in minor thirds, Faintly sweet, like passionate birds Whose warbling wakens a sense of pain,— Thrill through the nerves and make them quiver,— Heart, my heart, ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope

... have long been partners—all the Winnipeg dealers know the firm of Lorimer & Lorraine, and how they send their wheat in by special freight train. Then there is a stretch of raw breaking, and the tinkle of the binders rises out of a hidden hollow, as tireless arms of wood and steel pile up the sheaves of Jasper's crop—Jasper takes a special pride in forestalling us. The dun smoke of a smudge-fire shows that Harry is in prairie fashion protecting our stock, and I see it drifting ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... the shining glow-worms "light their blue fires," and the "pale Italian cricket, delirious with its nocturnal madness, chirrups among the rosemary thickets," while in the distance sounds the melodious tinkle of the bell-ringer frogs, replying from one hiding-place to another, the old master shows us that profound and mysterious magic with which matter is endowed by ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... for the pianoforte and so successfully that now it is better known in his version than in its original form. It is a piece which can be described only by one word—delicious. Its title is immediately understood by the unmistakable silvery tinkle of a bell in the high treble, constantly recurring, but always with added instead of diminishing, beauty. On the pianoforte it demands virtuosity of the highest rank, yet for the pianolist it is as easy to play as is the simplest pianoforte piece ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb

... Its doors were of powdered lacquer, and bulls and peacocks were wrought on them in raised and polished gold. The tilted roof was of sea- green porcelain, and the jutting eaves were festooned with little bells. When the white doves flew past, they struck the bells with their wings and made them tinkle. ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde

... crooning sabbath bells At evening in the golden fells I heard; the tinkle of the rills In haunts where childish fancy fed; I saw the orchard daffodils About the calm homestead; Ah, saddest thought that ever fills An errant heart that memory thrills, The heath-smell of his homeland hills To one whose loves ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth

... the house, and had lingered a minute on the porch, and now they went inside, for they heard the dinner-bell tinkle. ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler

... faint crash and a tinkle of glass as the bottle of red ink struck the penthouse roof just over the beast's head and deluged it with its vermilion contents. Eset reared, shook her neck, gave a defiant grunt and swiftly withdrew her ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... the wilderness, every detail of the scene came back to me again. I was standing on snowshoes, looking out over the frozen river, when Keeonekh appeared in an open pool with a trout in his mouth. He broke his way, with a clattering tinkle of winter bells, through the thin edge of ice, put his paws against the heavy snow ice, threw himself out with the same wriggling jump, and ate with his back arched—just as I had ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long

... silence they sat by the sputtering lamp until the tinkle of bell, the clatter of harness, the shout of drivers, and the distant lowing of cattle, told them it was ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell

... the mountains have turned black and the sky has faded. It grows so still on the water that the tinkle of a little Italian band reaches across the lake to Cadenabbia, a laugh rings out into the quiet air from one of the merry little rowboats, and even the slight clatter made by the fishermen, in putting their boats to rights for the night and in carrying their nets indoors, can ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various

... fragrance—the softly-sung response of the coffee-sprite. Her tray, with its pretty freight of silver and linen, primrose butter, and gently-browned pain-de-gruau, she set down on the table at my elbow; then she crossed the room and drew back the window-curtains, making the rings tinkle crisply on the metal rods, and letting in a gush of dazzling sunshine. From where I lay I could see the house-fronts opposite glow pearly-grey in shadow, and the crest of the slate roofs sharply print itself on ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... was the medal he hunted. On pressing the ashes through into the ash-box, something fell with a clear tinkle, and he dug round till he found a burned and blackened disk. Fire had harmed it woefully. That side bearing the face of its donor was roughened and scarred, so that no likeness of Mr. Carnegie survived; but on the other side, near to the rim, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... At the first tinkle, like arrows dismissed from the bow-string, two girls belonging to the older class jumped from their seats and flew, ahead of all the rest, into the entry, where hung the hats and caps of the school, and their dinner-baskets. One seized ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge

... negro strikes the ear in the grotesque and characteristic framework of the 'Bananier,' the plaintive melody of 'La Savane' sighs past on the evening breeze, Spanish eyes flash out temptingly from the enticing cadence of the 'Ojos Criollos,' and Spanish guitars tinkle in the soft moonlight of the 'Minuit a Seville,' and Tropical life awakes to melody under the touch of the Creole poet of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... late afternoon, and through the stillness she could hear the roar of the river, the tinkle of herd-bells, and the faint sound of chimes from the far-away village chapel. How quiet the house seemed without Marie and Pierre! The boy and girl had climbed to the hillside pasture to drive the ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett

... landmarks as an occasional inn, a pond or a barn, given her by the friendly porter, Barbara reached her destination. Under the porch she pulled the handle of the bell, all dank and glistening with moisture, and heard it tinkle ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... him loud and free As he tossed the lute to Marcadee, Who caught it featly, bowing low, And said, "My liege, I may not know To improvise; but I'll give a song, The song of our camp,—we've known it long. It suits not well this tinkle and thrum, But needs to be heard with a rattling drum. Ho, there! Tambour!—He knows it well,— 'The Brabancon!'—Now make it tell; Let your elbows now with a spirit wag In the outside ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... practised ear could gauge its fall, and I retreated a few yards into the passage. The courtyard outside caught it, and the entire chateau trembled violently at the concussion. But why, why these big guns? Another landed in the yard, followed by an unearthly tinkle of falling glass. Someone ran in from the gateway with a headlong rush, ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq

... was none. We could hear the purling swish of the rapid stream, the crumbling banks falling into the current with a distant splash. Occasionally a swift rushing of wings overhead told us of the arrowy flight of diver or teal. Far in the distance twinkled the gleam of a herdsman's fire, the faint tinkle of a distant bell, or the subdued barking of a village dog for a moment, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... morose and grave in spite of the fact that the squirrel, the long-tailed monkey, the parrot, and the bullfinch took great pains to distract him and lead him into the right path. The goose would tell fairy-tales, and in the midst of them the brook would tinkle a ballad; a great heavy stone would caper about ludicrously; the rose stealing up affectionately behind him would creep through his locks, and the ivy stroke his careworn forehead. But his melancholy and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... households come to obtain water. The young girls carry water gracefully poised in jars upon their heads, displaying forms and gait of faultless beauty. Some of these girls scrupulously screen their faces from the public eye; others roguishly remove the yasmak when a European smiles at them, and tinkle their silver bracelets as full ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... Tinkle, tinkle, sweetly it sang to us, Light was our talk as of faery bells— Faery wedding-bells faintly rung to us Down in their ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow

... incessantly twisting and turning and preening his tail-feathers; the still mistrustful rooks cawed now and then, sitting high, high up on the bare top of a birch-tree; the sun and wind played softly on its pliant branches; the tinkle of the bells of the Don monastery floated across to me from time to time, peaceful and dreary; while I sat, gazed, listened, and was filled full of a nameless sensation in which all was contained: sadness and joy and the foretaste of ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... that woo my ruffled spirits To a resigned and quiet contemplation. Yond brook, that, like a child, runs wide astray, Sings and skips on, nor knows its loneliness; A squirrel chatters at a doorless nut: A hammer bird drums on his hollow bark; And bits of winged life, with aery voices, Tinkle like fountains in a corridor. Fair haunt of peace, ye quiet cadences, Ye leafy caves of sadness and sweet sounds, That have no feeling nor a fellowship With the rash moods of terror and of pain, I did not think ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... down below, the waves breaking softly and regularly on the beach. He heard the rustling of the grasses as they trembled in the night breeze, the hoot of the owl in the ivied chimneys of Garthowen, the distant barking of a dog, the tinkle of a chain on some fishing boat rocking on the undulating waves; but no other sound broke ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine

... all sizes, ages, and nationalities, but every one alike arrayed in faultless evening dress, were dotted about the large, dim apartment. A faint odour of flowers came from the conservatory, and the tinkle of a fountain. The waiters, commanded by Jules, moved softly across the thick Oriental rugs, balancing their trays with the dexterity of jugglers, and receiving and executing orders with that air of profound importance of which only really ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett

... the great gong through the house. Doors were opened all along the corridor; light steps passed Priscilla's room. She heard the rustle of silk and the sweet, high tinkle of girlish laughter. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... landscape shows a harmonious blending of mountain and water, of cultivated fields and ancient forest trees. Here we see a quiet old town, whose roofs are green with the moss of many years, where willows and grassy mounds tell of a historic past, where the bells of ox-teams tinkle in the streets, and commerce itself wears a look of reminiscence. For we have come to the banks of that basin where the French, in the first years of the seventeenth century, laid the foundations of a settlement which, despite all its early misfortunes, has lasted until the present ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot

... to his cosey quarters, and silence had settled down over the beautiful plain. The lights were dimmed in the barracks; the sentries paced their measured rounds; from the verandas of the hotel came the ripple of murmured words and soft laughter, and a tinkle of banjo and guitar. At the gate the colonel exchanged good-night greetings with a happy-faced, motherly looking woman whom Bonner had noticed overwhelmed with pride and emotion during the ceremonies in the morning. He did not at first recognize the tall, erect ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King

... The gay tinkle of sleigh-bells was the next noise he heard, and presently the door was opened, and two muffled hooded figures looked into the room, now only lighted by the red embers ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... a bell beside the gate, and Dorothy pushed the button and heard a silvery tinkle sound within. Then the big gate swung slowly open, and they all passed through and found themselves in a high arched room, the walls of ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... in the room, which was so still that the sputtering noise made by the big lamp and the tinkle of a few cinders that fell from the fire sounded painfully loud. They looked at each other, but no one spoke, till Uncle Dick had fidgeted about in his chair for some time, and then, giving his big beard ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn

... mitigated by periodical lapses. I had still the ambition, formed in Sligo in my teens, of living in imitation of Thoreau on Innisfree, a little island in Lough Gill, and when walking through Fleet Street very homesick I heard a little tinkle of water and saw a fountain in a shop window which balanced a little ball upon its jet and began to remember lake water. From the sudden remembrance came my poem 'Innisfree,' my first lyric with anything in its rhythm of my own music. I had begun to loosen rhythm as an escape from ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats

... doorway to disappear immediately in another. The stamping of horses' hoofs, deadened by the dung and straw of the stable, was heard from time to time, and from inside the building issued a man's voice, talking to the animals and swearing at them. A faint tinkle of bells showed that the harness was being got ready; this tinkle soon developed into a continuous jingling, louder or softer according to the movements of the horse, sometimes stopping altogether, then breaking out in a ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... tinkle of the treble part of the Mozart trio (Lucia always took the treble, because it had more tune in it, though she pretended that she had not Georgie's fine touch, which made the bass effective) as he let himself in to Shakespeare's garden a few minutes before the appointed ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... the faithful Crusoe, by virtue of sight, hearing, and smell, guaranteed them against sudden attack during the hours of slumber. A perfume of wild flowers mingled with the loved odours of the "weed," and the tinkle of a tiny rivulet fell sweetly on their ears. In short, the "Pale-faces" were supremely happy, and disposed to be thankful for their recent deliverance ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne

... to his loved sultana In sleep still breathes the sigh, The name of some black-eyed Tirana, Escapes our lips as we lie. Till, with morning's rosy twinkle, Again we're up and gone— While the mule-bell's drowsy tinkle Beguiles the rough way on. Oh the joys of our merry posada, Where, resting at close of day, We, young Muleteers of Grenada, Thus sing the gay ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... floating trails of blue smoke were streaming away astern from the tiny cabooses of the craft at anchor, and a mournful distant "yo heave oh" came booming past us on the light air, and the everlasting tinkle of the convent bells sounded cheerily, and the lowing of the kine around us called up old associations in my bosom, as I looked forth on the glorious spectacle from beneath a magnificent bower of orange—trees ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... this a little footpath, narrow with one man's treading, led up across the small green field that made Mr. Tilley's whole estate, except a straggling pasture that tilted on edge up the steep hillside beyond the house and road. I could hear the tinkle-tankle of a cow-bell somewhere among the spruces by which the pasture was being walked over and forested from every side; it was likely to be called the wood lot before long, but the field was unmolested. I could not see a bush or a brier anywhere within ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett

... hum which haunts the mind As a voice inarticulate, the tone Of many men whose mouths speak distinct words Which blend in grim confusion, till the sound Like a vague aspiration climbs the sky. The muffled murmur of the iron wheels, And the sharp tinkle of the hurried bell, And a few words between were all the sounds Which peopled ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke

... pretty high figure. This last was indeed a rickety, jangling old box, but Daisy learned in a way to play upon it, and we men-folk, sitting in her room in the candle-light, and listening to her voice cooing to its shrill tinkle of accompaniment, thought the music as sweet as that ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... no answer but his whistling stopped suddenly and the knuckles of his clasped hands whitened. Atherton looked away quickly and his eyeglass fell with a little tinkle against a waistcoat button. There was another long pause. Finally the music died away and the stillness was broken only by the soft slap-slap of the water ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... increase in his feeling of tranquil seclusion. Even the news-offices had put up their shutters, and a confiding stranger could nowhere buy a guide-book to help his wandering feet about the reposeful city, or to show him how to get out of it. There was, to be sure, a cheerful tinkle of horse-car bells in the air, and in the creeping vehicles which created this levity of sound were a few lonesome passengers on their way to Scollay's Square; but the two travelers, not having well-regulated minds, had no desire to go there. What would have become of Boston if the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... There was a tiny tinkle from a bell and, just as Johnny hopped behind the clock, he saw a boot stick out of ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle

... for the ladies. Whether it was ever occupied in Uncle James's day, nobody can tell; but Aunt Caroline, his sister, who has the best rooms there now, vows she's seen the ghost of a lovely being, all spangled gauze and jewels, with silver khal-khal, or anklets, that tinkle as she moves. I assure my aunt it must be a dream, come to punish her for indulging in two goes of her favourite sweet at dinner; but in my heart I shouldn't wonder if it's true. The whole lot of us, in our family, are romantic and superstitious. We can't help it and don't ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... alone, and then the steps came up again, accompanied this time by the tinkle of china and spoons. Priscilla was sitting at the window looking on to the churchyard, staring into the dark with its swaying branches and few faint stars, and when she heard him outside the door listening again in anxious silence she got up ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim

... is here. To a blended tinkle of harp, reeds and high strings sounds a delicate air, quick and light, yet with a tinge of plaint that may be a part of all Celtic song. ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp

... all gravity and spite vanished from Miriam's eyes; she clapped her hands and cried, "If it had only been the fact and not a dream! Only do not be frightened again, you fool! Do you know then what it is when the pipes sound, and the lutes tinkle, and our feet fly round in circles as if ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... occurred. Unthinkingly she had turned over and extended her arm, searching in the darkness behind her. There came a tinkle, a vague violet perfume, and the starlight fell on her clustering hair and throat as she lifted and drained the ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... the figure it stood there patient and unmoved, like one who has all time at its disposal, playing with the blue beads. I heard them tinkle against each other, which proves that it was human, for how could a wraith cause beads to tinkle, although it is true that Christmas-story ghosts are said to clank their chains. Her eyes roved idly and without interest over the semi-circle ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard

... him and there was a tinkle of faraway music. It frightened him and he struggled to get back into contact with the girl's mind. But there was no contact. Apparently he had been ...
— The Inhabited • Richard Wilson

... carried a great bulging skin under his arm—bagpipes! She was sure they made good music to each other in the green country places. Very early in the morning she heard them come in; they were known by their bells. She jumped out of her luxurious bed at the first tinkle, and was at the shutter watching for them before ever they rounded the angle of the Ponte della Morte. There they came! colour of dust, with the straggling goats following after in a cloud of it. Her impulse was to ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... the fitness of things. It cannot soften the woe of the people who are disinclined to the giving away of money, and the cheerful givers need no encouragement. For my part, I like to sit, quite undistracted by soprano solos, and listen to the refined tinkle of the sixpences and shillings, and the vulgar chink of the pennies and ha'pennies, in the contribution-boxes. Country ministers, I am told, develop such an acute sense of hearing that they can estimate the amount ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the undergrowth. And, indeed, without this it would have been risky to make further explorations, for often masses of wonderful matted vegetation sustained us temporarily over streams six or eight feet below, whose musical tinkle alone warned us of our peril. I shall never again see anything so beautiful as this fringe of the impassable timber belt. I enjoyed it more than anything I have yet seen; it was intoxicating, my eyes were "satisfied with seeing." It was a dream, a rapture, this maze of form and colour, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... side of the ingle. The kitten, with a bell attached to a ribbon about its neck, sported with the bows of her dainty slippers. Only the click of the needles, and the tinkle of the bell, and the hollow tick of the great clock in the corner broke ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... his elbow, and one of the telephones began to tinkle. He picked up the receiver and waved them out of the room. Virginia followed her guide upstairs, feeling more and more with every step she took that she was indeed a wanderer in some new and enchanted land of the ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... and faces and shadows. The voices of early evening had settled down to one soothing hum whose deepest note was the steady chumping of the bullocks above their chopped straw, and whose highest was the tinkle of a Bengali dancing-girl's sitar. Most men had eaten and pulled deep at their gurgling, grunting hookahs, which in ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... thought, at once sweet and sorrowful. On her knees, in her accustomed place, Catherine Fontaine saw the priest advance toward the altar, preceded by two servers. She recognized neither priest nor clerks. The Mass began. It was a silent Mass, during which neither the sound of the moving lips nor the tinkle of the bell was audible. Catherine Fontaine felt that she was under the observation and the influence also of her mysterious neighbor, and when, scarcely turning her head, she stole a glance at him, she recognized the young Chevalier d'Aumont-Clery, who had once loved her, ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... a tinkle of falling glass; I looked up and saw that the window was shattered. The muslin curtain in front of it had been torn down by the passage of the brick, and the street without was visible from where I sat. A considerable crowd had gathered on the pavement. They saw me and a loud ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne

... deck, climbed the fo'c'sle steps and sat down on the anchor. At Lashnagar she had always seen ghosts walking on the sea at nightfall. Now they rose out of the swirling water, passed in and out swaying among the lights of the ship. From under her feet in the crew's quarters came the tinkle of a mandoline playing "La ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... see him drive the cattle From the pasture through the lane With their mellow bells a-tinkle, Sending out a low refrain; I can see him drive them homeward, Speckle, Brindle, Bess and Belle; All the herd from down the valley As the shades of even fell. Thus, I wander like a pilgrim— Slow the steps that once were strong; Back to greet him, Ragged ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various

... soft-stepping Mexican servants and cowboys. And everywhere there was the hush of perfect content while from the living room there floated out the clear, sweet tones, the weird, dreamy melodies, and the tinkle of ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter

... be endured." To get the real old-time effect, serve with spoons in the goblets rather than straws. In dipping and sipping more of the mint-essence comes out—beside the clinking of the spoons is nearly as refreshing as the tinkle of the ice. ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams

... last by the musical tinkle of a bell. He turned his face toward the sound, but could see nothing. The bell was coming nearer; it came nearer still. Then he saw here and there through the trees small, moving patches of white; an old ewe ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright

... environs are mysterious; outside the walls, there are carven, gloomy palaces that once re-echoed to the tinkle of stringed instruments and the love-songs of some sultan's favorite—now fallen into ruins, or rebuilt to stable horses or shelter guns and stores and men; but eloquent in all their new-smeared whitewash, or in crumbling decay, of long-since dead intrigue. No places, ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... not, in lisping notes, The madrigals of lesser minds! My heart tones thunder from the throats Of throbbing seas and raging winds; And yet, the master-spirit finds The tenderness of mother earth Is there expressed, despite the dearth Of tinkle tunes ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler

... funnel where the dumb-waiter slides," thought Dave, and he caught hold of the nearest rope, pulling and shaking it to attract attention, and calling loudly at the same time. At once he heard a tinkle-tinkle of a small bell up the dark funnel; and then a scraping sound from the same direction, seeming to draw nearer him. Directly the dumb-waiter cage was seen descending, and Dave held fast to the wire rope until the cage was within a ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... thing that happened was a snap and a tinkle in our inner workings, rather like the sound you might expect if a giantess dropped a hairpin. "Chain broken!" grumbled the chauffeur, as he stopped the car on the level of a long, straight road, and jumped nimbly down. "We oughtn't ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... We, too, must join the revellers, and have a sleigh-ride. Girls, get on your fur; wrap yourselves up warmly in the old bear-skin; hunt up the old guitar; the sleigh is at the door, the moon is beaming. The bells tinkle ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... game of Peek-a-boo, but seemed a new, surprising game to Miss Theodosia. The big playmate on the grass spread a handkerchief over the little playmate's face, and with a shriek of joy the little playmate did the rest. Then the big child's turn—turn and turn about. Deep voice and thin, sweet tinkle of baby voice joined in a curiously harmonious chorus that rang through the window pane into the two pairs of ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... him, and was thus enabled to adopt the mien most suitable to the contingency when he found himself ushered into the presence of the millionaire and his son. The set look upon their faces, the ceremonious manner of their greeting, and the low buzzing of the phonograph, audible above the tinkle of a musical box ingeniously intended to drown it, confirmed his guess even before a word ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston

... three hours, slowly and silently, over a plain knee-deep in snow. About half-way across a tinkle of bells is heard, clear and musical, in the distance. Presently a large caravan looms out of the dusk—fifty or sixty camels and half a dozen men. The latter exchange a cheery "Good night" with my guide. Slowly the ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... believe that which is not, or this gold must be very different from the yellow stuff that this coin is made of, this coin which is of no use but to have a hole pierced through it and hang to my girdle, that it may tinkle ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow

... seized hold upon her frightened imagination. What if this stranger had been deputed to take vengeance upon her for all her other victims? And if this was revenge, then worse things yet were in store for her. The tinkle of the horses' bells cut through the rumbling of the wheels; the sharp, shrill sound struck upon her like a cry of anguish, and in her terror she was ready to risk everything in a leap from the carriage. But no sooner did she relax her hold of ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson

... much religion, looked rather contemptuously upon the methods of the Salvationists. Some have gone so far as to intimate that the Salvation Army was vulgar in its methods and lacking in dignity and even in reverence. Some have intimated that converting a sinner to the tap of a bass drum or the tinkle of a tambourine was an improper process altogether. Never again, though, shall I hear the blare of the cornet as it cuts into the chorus of hallelujah whoops, where a ring of blue- bonneted women and blue-capped men stand exhorting on a city street-corner under the gaslights, ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill

... glared across the open space in front, lighting up the tower of the old church, the high roofs of the ancient houses, and the drifting clouds above them. Then a crash as of terrible thunder shook the little town from end to end, and as it died away the street lamps went out, and the tinkle of falling glass sounded on the pavements of the Market-Place. And in the second of dead silence which followed, a woman's voice, shrill, terrified, shrieked loudly, once, ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher

... Ergo, and the cloud of incense rose from the censer in the priest's hand. Then, at the thin, sweet tinkle of the bell, and the first white gleam of the Unspeakable Mystery upheld by the servant of the Altar, the heads bowed and sank as when a sudden wind sweeps over a field of ripened corn. Only one or two remained unmoved, one of these a man's head, young ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... the tinkle of a piano out of tune, the blare of a five-piece orchestra, and the raucous singing of girls who had lost their voices as significantly as other things. And beyond that, along shadowy corridors, were other girls standing or sitting in ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby

... aroused by the music-boxes. The children listened enchanted to the limpid tinkle of the tunes. ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas

... she could see the bars of lamplight on the deserted veranda, and hear from the open windows of the living-room a hum of conversation in which Jane seemed to be taking a leading part. Then came the tinkle of the old piano and Mary's voice, singing, or attempting to sing, for it was soon apparent that her voice sagged ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... again and spoke, I thought I must have been mistaken in that fancy, or else her emotion had been due to another cause than that I had imagined. For there was no change in the ungentle glittering eyes; no softening in the dry tinkle of the voice that delivered the Signora's answer. "I am sorry I can do nothing for your friend. You will tell her I have read her letter, and that I leave this place tomorrow morning." She inclined her head as she said this, I suppose by way of indication that the Herr ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... rang the bell—quick, but not loud—a cautious tinkle—a sort of warning metal whisper. Rosine darted from her cabinet and ran to open. The person she admitted stood with her two minutes in parley: there seemed a demur, a delay. Rosine came to the garden door, lamp in hand; she stood on the steps, lifting her lamp, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... was a light to Clarice. She knew it for the superlative in Mallinson's grammar of abuse. Bourgeois! The term was the palm of a hand squashed upon a lighted candle; it snuffed you out. Convicted of bourgeoisie, you ought to tinkle a bell for the rest of your life, or at the easiest be confined east of Temple Bar. Applied to Drake the word connoted animosity pure and simple, animosity suddenly conceived too, for it was not a week since Mallinson had been boasting of his friendship ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason

... worn by Hindoo women; it is also called nupur. It is hollow, and contains loose bits of metal, which tinkle when ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn

... made at conversation—dishes came and went, glasses were filled and emptied in absolute silence. There was something ominous in this freedom from talk and the quiet broken only by the tinkle of table implements and the rather noisy character of Van Diest's feeding. Richard was struck by the old man's prodigious capacity for devouring food. He ate with a calculated energy as though the safety of ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee

... in that sketch I made in the park," said Joe. "And Tinkle gave me permission to hang two of them in his window. I may sell one if the right kind of a ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... evening stillness woke not, neither uttered cry nor plaint, nor did its subtle air vibrate with the slightest tinkle—so soft was the fall of the retreating steps. They sounded for a time, and then were silent. And the evening stillness became pensive, stretched itself out in long shadows, and then grew dark;—and suddenly night, coming to meet it, all atremble with the rustle of sadly ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev

... with sweetness, and the moonshine glimmers white Across the path, 'mid shadows wide, and outlines, too, the wall Where stand the broad banana trees and lemon flowers fall. A whisper low beyond the wall, a name below the breath— For Life is full of treachery, yet Love is Lord of Death— The tinkle of a gay guitar, a cry, a horse in flight— Ay Dios! guard the quinta in the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... a chair under the chandelier and slowly revolves it, scrutinizing it, and causing the glass prisms to tinkle. ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... fallen asleep thinking of the letter beneath her pillow, promising her return to college at the beginning of next term; but at the first tinkle of her alarm-clock she was up, and, dressing by candlelight, went softly down the stairs and out into the keen air of the morning. The stars were still bright overhead, and there was no light in the east; but Gertrude ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... "bounders" deluded by the glitter of their own jewelry and the thrill of their wasted money that they were climbing into New York society—these and other curious types rubbed elbows in this melting pot of folly. The tinkle of glasses, the increasing buzz of conversation, the empty laughter of too many emptied cocktail glasses mingled with the droning music of an Hawaiian string quartette in ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... Paris an unpublished opera of Auber's. Emily seated herself at the piano—her host took the violin—Clarendon was an excellent flute player—and the tinkle of the Viscount's guitar came in very harmoniously. By the time refreshments were introduced, Charles Selby too was in his glory. He had already nearly convulsed the Orientalist by a theory which he said he had formed, of a ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... partly torn away from it already, and soon the collar itself was in her hands. She gave an exclamation of delight. It was a pretty collar! Not only was it made of brass and lined with bright scarlet leather, but at the side was fastened a little round bell which gave a charming tinkle. The very present of all others which Susan would have chosen herself for Monsieur—if she had thought of it. But it was not her present at all; it was Sophia Jane who had thought of it, and of course it was very good of her. And yet—she went on to think, turning the collar ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton

... all Avrillia said, but her voice made Sara's heart quiver, for in the sound of it she seemed to hear the temple-bells, and the fairy hand-organ she had heard in the steep street at Zinariola, and the drowsy tinkle of the fountain in the Butterfly Palace, and the little Laughs that leaped about the mountain, and the morning and evening sheep-bells, all gathered together into one sound that seemed to say that ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker

... smiled, and reached for her glass. The pink lemonade was almost at her lips when Livingstone's arm shot out. Then came the tinkle of shattered glass and a crimson stain where the ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter

... horse could get along better by itself in the dark, and it was more than possible that one or two lithe cougars might be slinking behind him on velvet paws. The horse scraped along gingerly, feeling its way step by step, and sending stones rattling and clattering down the precipice at his left to tinkle into the ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... and laugh as the boatmen lifted their passengers to their shoulders and with them splash through the breakers, or in the bazaars for hours he would bargain with the Indian merchants, or in the great mahogany hall of the Ivory House, to the whisper of a punka and the tinkle of ice in a tall glass, listen to tales of Arab raids, of elephant poachers, of the trade in white and black ivory, of the great explorers who had sat in that same room—of Emin Pasha, of Livingstone, of Stanley. His comic opera ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis

... he said, 'that the old witch on the island has a goat with golden horns from which hang bells that tinkle the sweetest music. That goat I must have! But, tell me, how am I to get it? I would give the third part of my kingdom to anyone who would ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... snow-wreaths, the fields streaked everywhere with long shadows. Little winding lines of a grey colour which radiated from the hamlet indicated the tracks where the settlers drove their sleighs and wood-sledges. Many of these were seen moving along the far-off tracks like insects, while the tinkle of the sleigh-bells ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne

... dead within, and caught the short, deer skin latch-string to the wooden pin outside. With his Barlow knife, he swiftly stripped a bark string from a pawpaw bush near by, folded and tied his blanket, and was swinging the little pack to his shoulder, when the tinkle of a cow-bell came through the bushes, close at hand. Old Nance, lean and pied, was coming home; he had forgotten her, it was getting late, and he was anxious to leave for fear some neighbor might come; but there was no one ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox



Words linked to "Tinkle" :   sound, tink, go, tinkly, clink



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