|
|
|
More "Pert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said Mrs. Leigh, "some girls here are that pert and forward, I can't bear it myself; and yet the gentlemen all encourage it, and think it real smart. Lilla Tremaine, you know, ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... lords no better than harboring wizards. And I know not, of the two, which is the more like to bring us to the gallows," replied Tirechair, taking up his halbert. "I will go my rounds over by Champfleuri; God protect us, and send me to meet some pert jade out in her bravery of gold rings to glitter in the shade like ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... "Don't be pert, nurse! You know it is one of the strictest rules of the hospital that none of the nurses are to speak ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... You're a pert young piece for your size!" remarked the horrible man; and though I could have boxed his ears (which stood out exactly like the handles on an urn), I felt my own tingle, because it was true, what he said: ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... praise my old graveyard of a body, Miss Annie. My sperit is pert enough, but it's all buried up in this old clumsy, half-dead carcass. The worms will close their ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... not infrequently have accused American children of being "pert," or "lacking in reverence," or "sophisticated." Those of us who are better acquainted with the children of our own Nation cannot concur in any of these accusations. Unhappily, there are children in America, as there are ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... on my faith I think Burnett'd have done it, only she pipes up, sweet and pert as you please: 'Mr. Auctioneer, will you kindly proceed with the sale in the customary manner? I've other business to attend to, and I can't afford to wait all night on men who don't know their own minds.' And then she smiles at Burnett, ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... all goes well!" he crooned. "There's Douglas, gone for good! The boy is young and soft-like. He might fall into this pert minx's hands as young Douglas with Queen Mary of old. And, thank God, he knows nothing of the packet of jewels! Not a soul knows in the wide world! Why should I not save them for myself and turn them into gold? Yes, save them for myself. ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... ever cease to admire a mistress that loved him for himself alone? I have for some years sought for a woman, who a stranger to my fortune could think that I had merit as a man. After having tried in vain, even amongst the pert and the ugly, how great at last must be my rapture to have made a conquest over such sense and such heavenly beauty.' Then turning to Jenkinson, 'As I cannot, Sir, part with this young lady myself, for she has taken a fancy to the cut of my face, all the recompence ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... means a goal, eh! Feeling pretty pert this morning, eh! Mebbe you'd like to go on an' ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... unlike our friend Edward than the stranger. Fair, freckled, light-haired, light-eyed, with invisible eye-brows and eye-lashes, insignificant in feature, pert and perking in expression, and in figure so dwarfed and stunted, that though in point of age he had evidently attained his full growth, (if one may use the expression to such a he-doll,) Robert at fifteen would have made two of him,—such was the new favourite. So ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... of Gypsy. That was it—"charm"; and the minute Missy laid eyes on the darling she succumbed to it. She had thought herself absurdly but deep-rootedly afraid of all horseflesh, but Gypsy didn't seem a mere horse. She was pert, coquettish, coy, loving, inquisitive, naughty; both Tess and Missy declared she had really ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... men in general. They are either over-suave and polite, as if they condescended to remember that you are elderly and that it is their duty to make you forget it, or else they are pert and shallow and disgust you with their egotism. But this young man looked sensible and business-like, and I took to him at once, though what connection he could have with this affair I could ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... dirty thoughts along His tiny sphere of grovelling sympathies— Has knocked himself full-butt, with blundering trouble, Against a mountain he can neither double Nor ever hope to scale. So like a free, Pert, self-conceited scarabaeus, he Takes it into his horny head to swear There's no such thing as any ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... low-like—just dirt floor—and then we just naturally went a-whooping under the barn floor when the Yanks come. And we didn't know Cap'n Sawyer by his voice nohow. We heard 'im discoursing, and we allowed it was a mighty pert man, but we didn't know that it was him. ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... with bright blue eyes, and an arch expression, all the droller under her prim round cap; and Sylvester was a good deal amused with her pert bold little nods and airs. He paid a good deal of attention to her, and she in return grew more forward and chattering. It is what little girls will sometimes do under the pleasure and excitement of the notice of gentlemen, and it makes their friends very uneasy, since the only ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Trim little, pert little, chic Dumb Dora attracts a world of interest among Evening Journal readers. She is "not so dumb" and that's where the fun comes in. Men like "Dora" because she is clever. Women like "Dora" because ...
— What's in the New York Evening Journal - America's Greatest Evening Newspaper • New York Evening Journal
... so in attendance who smoked his pipe or cigar and said little, but that little rather jocular. Girls tripped by, either pale with the heat, or flushed, or protected from extremes of temperature by a heavy layer of powder: and flappers with pert faces and fluffy hair swung gaily along, always with a generous display of fat neatly-stockinged leg. But it was all charming, particularly in the evening light, because there was about it all such an appealing atmosphere of ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... I have been now describing affect the gravity of the lion; those I am going to describe more resemble the pert vivacity of smaller animals. The barber, who is still master of the ceremonies, cuts their hair close to the crown, and then with a composition of meal and hog's lard plasters the whole in such a manner as to make it impossible to distinguish whether ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... of pink flannel, her feet in dilapidated slippers, and her hair in curl-papers along her forehead. Although she saw that her visitor was quite a stranger to her, she did not offer to rise, but simply raising her pert, faded, but still ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... at anything, but on trying to see if they could recognise any of their friends! It was a curious collection certainly! So many pictures of old disgraceful men, whose faces seemed like the faces of toads or magpies; dull, blinking, malign, or with the pert brightness of acquisition. There were pictures too of human life so-called, silly, romantic, insincerely posed; some fatuous allegorical things, like ill-staged melodramas; but the strength of English art came out ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... awaiting his chance. "Another? Really! We're guests, Sheila, do you hear that?" He looked at Mandleco with immense disdain, gave a pert tilt of his head and surveyed the room with a grimace of distaste. "And just how long are we to be ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... an unpleasant remembrance of the girl, too." Mrs. Tweksbury smiled grimly. "She was always a pert chit, and I believe she is like her disreputable father—you ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... of a very important expedition, when Ferdinand the Catholic died, on the 23rd of January, 1516. Cabot returned at once to England, having probably obtained leave of absence. Eden tells us that the following year Cabot was appointed with Sir Thomas Pert to the command of a fleet which was to reach China by the north-west. On the 11th of June, he was in Hudson's Bay at 67-1/2 degrees of latitude; the sea free from ice spread itself out before him so far that he reckoned upon success in his enterprise, when the faintheartedness of his ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... answer this, methinks, and a pack of learned orators most sweetly gravelled. And what did the other man say? The Athenians were to choose one of two architects for a very great building they had designed; of these, the first, a pert affected fellow, offered his service in a long premeditated discourse upon the subject of the work in hand, and by his oratory inclined the voices of the people in his favour; but the other in three words: "O Athenians, what this ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... bought a dog—a queen! Ah Tiny, dear departing pug! She lives, but she is past sixteen And scarce can crawl across the rug. I loved her beautiful and kind; Delighted in her pert Bow-wow: But now she snaps if you don't mind; 'Twere lunacy to ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... could do it tip-top; why not he? But things were unquestionably perverse. The boat wouldn't go in a straight line-in fact, it didn't go very fast anyway. The black eyes before him framed by that impudently beautiful face, so pert, so naive, so understandingly aware—so "damned handsome" he said to himself, prodded him to redoubled effort. He was swinging his two hundred pounds lustily, unevenly—an unusually vicious jerk, and snap went the ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... London, I went to St. James's Church last Sunday, and there opposite me sat my beauty of the Wells. Her behaviour during the whole service was so pert, languishing and absurd; she flirted her fan, and ogled and eyed me in a manner so indecent, that I was obliged to shut my eyes, so as actually not to see her, and whenever I opened them beheld hers ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... our mind's eye the pert, pretty little faces, and the loves of bonnets which flirt and flutter along Broadway in the bright sunshine—Longum Vale! In the flesh we shall see them no more. No more oysters at Downing's, no more terrapins at Florence's, no more fugacious banquets at the Astor House. We have traduced ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... hoped to pull wool off dead sheep and make some more money that way. They had quite made up their minds about what they wanted to get: it must be house plants for ma; but still they both wished they could get some little thing for pa. They were not pert or forward in any way, but they answered readily and we all drew them out, even ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... set down for a minute, but nought ever daunted her for long. She was as pert a little maid as ever I knew, and but little deserved her name of Meliora. (Ah me, is this ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... father Simon," said a voice, which strove to drown in an artificial squeak the pert, conceited tone of Oliver Proudfute. "But a sight of thy lovely daughter had been more sweet to us young bloods than a ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... pictorial tone; the operation of time is now to deposit shabbiness upon shabbiness. But it's for the most part a patient, sturdy, sympathetic shabbiness, which soothes rather than irritates the nerves, and has in many cases doubtless as long a career to run as most of our pert and shallow freshnesses. It projects at all events a deeper shadow into the constant twilight of the narrow streets—that vague historic dusk, as I may call it, in which one walks and wonders. These streets are hardly more than sinuous ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... "It was pert and unbecoming," said Father Francis, gravely, though a twinkle in his eye showed that he was not so profoundly shocked as his penitent appeared to be. "But go to graver matters. Immodesty, said you? I shall be very sorry, if this is so. You did not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... whispering, I warrant ye, filthy tales in his ear. Nothing can be more rueful than the patient's countenance; more forlorn than his beard; more pious than his eye, which forms a strong contrast to the pert winks and insidious glances of his persecutors; some of whom; I need not mention, are evidently of the ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... room, so small, so scant, Yet somehow oh, so bright and airy. There was a pink geranium plant, Likewise a very pert canary. And in the maiden's heart it seemed Some fount of gladness must be springing, For as alone I sadly dreamed I heard ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... word!" said Miss Bruce-Drummond. She listened fascinatedly to their deafening repertoire. Greenmount's supporters, a rather forlorn little group of substitutes, with the coach and trainer and a teacher or two, and a pert fox terrier wearing their colors on his collar, elicitated a brief, passing pity from Honor. They looked strange and friendless, these smart Northern prep-schoolers. The L. A. rooters conscientiously gave their opponents' yell and received a spatter of applause. The Northerners trotted ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... good-looking, then? They say it's sinfu' to be a witch—if so, how comes grandmother Demdike to be one? Boh ey'n observed that those folks os caws her witch are afeard on her, so it may be pure spite o' their pert." ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... "Ratty, don't be pert. To come back to what I was originally saying—I repeat, sir, I am at twelve paces from my object, six from the mirror, which, doubled by reflection, makes twelve; such is the law of optics. I suppose ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... delightful, and she looked delightful. She was wearing a blue-and-red striped petticoat, rather short, and a white jersey, and over that a man's blue jacket, which fitted her pretty well. She looked indescribably pert and charming, though the jacket ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... close the scene, The sacred altar should be clean. Oh, had I Shadwell's second bays, Or, Tate! thy pert and humble lays,— Ye pair, forgive me, when I vow I never missed your works till now,— I'd tear the leaves to wipe the shrine, That only way you please the Nine; But since I chance to want these two, I'll make ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... not say that your friend is pretty, graceful, good-natured; that she dresses becomingly, is rather cultivated in her tastes; that she is confident of herself, and a little conceited and imperious; that she is quick, and ready with somewhat pert answers; and that she is seen ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... me on to snap out little sharp speeches, which he always laughed at; and I suspect that was one thing that made me so pert. I looked up to him as a superior being, except when I was angry with him, which was about half the time. I told Ruphelle Allen he was a "bad, naughty boy;" but when she said, "Yes, I think so, too," I instantly cried out, "Well, I guess he's gooder ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... such? Wa'n't teasin' for your old job back again, was you, Al? Cal'late he could have it, couldn't he, Cap'n? We'll need somebody to heave a bucket of water on Issy pretty soon; he's gettin' kind of pert and uppish again. Pretty much so. Yes, ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... the passage cut short her excuses: a woman's laugh. Hetty knew of two women only in the house—the landlady who had opened the door last night and a pert-looking slatternly servant she had passed at the foot of the stairs on her way to the cathedral. She could not tell to which of these the voice belonged: but the laugh and the jest it followed—though she had not caught it—were ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and cold in consequence, and his little pert nose is tinged with a chilly pink. Half an hour ago, mother called me away to a private conference, exciting thereby a mighty curiosity not unmixed with envy in ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... is still full of old carved stones, lintels, and mullions, and capitals of pillars, and a grotesque figure of a bearded man, with a tunic confined round the waist by a cord, which crowns one of my rockeries. But it is all gone now, and the pert cockneyfied house stands up among the shrubberies and walnuts, surveying the ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... kind is the life of that extraordinary couple, Harry Tersett and his lady. Harry was, in the days of his celibacy, one of those pert creatures who have much vivacity and little understanding; Mrs. Rebecca Quickly, whom he married, had all that the fire of youth and a lively manner could do towards making ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... late at night, and he was in a despondent mood after one of his recurring disappointments—this time a graceful slender shape which he had earlier in the evening pursued in a flock of home-going shop-girls until she turned and revealed a pert Cockney face which bore no resemblance to Sisily's. Several hours later he paid another of his visits to Euston Square, which he believed to be the starting-point of Sisily's own wanderings. He felt closer to her in that locality because of that. From Euston Square he walked on aimlessly, ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... disguise; that Bentley's insinuation, that looseness of living is the cause of his looseness of belief, is ungenerous, and requires proof which Bentley has not given: that the bitter abuse which he heaps upon his adversary as 'a wretched gleaner of weeds,' 'a pert teacher of his betters,' 'an unsociable animal,' 'an obstinate and intractable wretch,' and much more to the same effect, is unworthy of a Christian clergyman, and calculated to damage rather than do service to the cause ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... extraordinary powers of ventriloquism, bodily and mental; and Burney said (such was the vividness of the scene) that when he awoke the next morning he wondered what three amusing characters he had been in company with the evening before.' He was fond also of imitating old Mudford, of the Courier, a fat, pert, dull man, who had left the Morning Chronicle in 1814, just as Hazlitt joined it, and was renowned for having written a reply to 'Coelebs.' He would enter a room, fold up his great-coat, take out ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... boarding-schools, where every thing is taught and nothing understood; where airs, graces, mouth primming, shoulder-setting and elbow-holding are studied, and affectation, formality, hypocrisy, and pride are acquired; and where children the most promising are presently transformed into vain, pert misses, who imagine that to perk up their heads, turn out their toes, and exhibit the ostentatious opulence of their relations, in a tawdry ball night dress, is the ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... ailing at this time, the mother would have accompanied her son. The possibility of damp sheets weighed heavy on her mind; and landladies who filch from the tea-caddy, with landladies' girls, pert and familiar, preparing insidious gruel and seductive cups of coffee, were the lions which her imagination conjured up as prowling for her Alick through the fastnesses of Monk Grange. Circumstances, however, were stronger than her desire; and, happily for Alick, she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... them have a bit till Betty had eaten all that she pleased. Was not this enough to spoil any young hen? Betty was fast getting pert. All this was because of her good looks ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various
... speaking to his father, on an irrational impulse, over to Madam Bell's. There he came unprepared upon the strangest sight he had ever seen in Addington. Sophy, her cynical, pert face actually tied up into alarm, red, creased and angry, was standing in the library, and Madam Bell, in a wadded wrapper and her nightcap, was counting out money into her trembling hand. To Sophy, it was as terrifying as receiving money from the ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... O crafty, pert canaille! Smile away! That mighty hour Dawns wherein we shall be freed From ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... that worst of them, the unmistakable bad temper, not aggressive, but obstinately sullen, which made her and Miss Selina sometimes not on speaking terms for a week together. But she simply "sulked;" she never grumbled or was pert; and she did her work just as usual—with a kind of dogged struggle not only against the superior powers but against something within herself much ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... must have been something enormous. It was a carnal, self-seeking congregation, wholly inattentive to the service which was going on, and devoted to the one object of having my blood. The fleas of all nations were there. The smug, steady, importunate flea from Holywell Street; the pert, jumping puce from hungry France, the wary, watchful pulce with his poisoned stiletto; the vengeful pulga of Castile with his ugly knife; the German floh with his knife and fork, insatiate, not rising ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... of her grew stronger and more concrete. He found that he was able to visualize her, as he might visualize something remembered, or conceived of in imagination—a lovely young girl, slender and clothed in something loose and filmy, with flowers in her honey-colored hair, and clear blue eyes, a pert, cheerful face, a wide, smiling mouth and an impudently up-tilted nose. He realized that this image was merely a sort of allegorical representation, his own private object-abstraction from a reality which his senses could never picture ...
— Dearest • Henry Beam Piper
... there sat beside her a distinctly lovely young woman. What struck Lavendar was the wealth of colour she brought into the picture: goldy brown hair, brown tweed dress, with a cape of blue cloth slipping off her shoulders, and a brown toque with a pert upstanding quill that seemed to express spirit and pluck, and a merry heart. His quick glance took in the little hands that held the withered old ones. Both heads were bowed and in the brown tweed lap was a child's shoe,—a wee, worn, fat shoe. Beside it lay ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that he was not content with the decree which the Chancellour proponed to him. But this stamp of Mr. Patrick's was so heavy upon his brother's foot, who had ane sair toe which was painful to him, wherefore he looked to him and said, 'Ye were over pert to stampe upon my foot; were you out of the King's presence I would overtake you upon the mouth.' Mr. Patrick, hearing the vain words of his brother, pled on his knees before the King and the Justice, and ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... His encounters with Fenellan were enlivening engagements and left no malice; only a regret, when the fencing passed his guard, that Fenellan should prefer to flash for the minute. He would have met a pert defender of England, in the person of Miss Priscilla Graves, if she had not been occupied with observation of the bearing of Lady Grace Halley toward Mr. Victor Radnor; which displeased her on behalf ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... him, or whether it was a certain influence which Bill Howroyd, as he was familiarly called, had over most people, Mark Clay got up from his seat, saying, 'Yes, we'll be better without that pert lass's company, Bill,' and led the ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... mind"—here he paused, and slapped his hand with much energy upon the table. Mrs. Tag-rag wiped her eyes, sighed, and resumed her book. Miss Tag-rag began to make tea, her papa gradually forgetting his rage, as he fixed his dull gray eyes fondly on the pert ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... forgot his master's presence and shut his notebook with a bang, 'Congratulate you, sir,' says he, quite pert to Maskew; 'you are the landlord of the poorest pothouse in the Duchy at ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... of his neck, beside a "meikle stane"; and a melancholy old woman had hanged herself at the bush aboon the well, as the poem relates: all these matters the poet pressed into the service of the muse, and used them with a skill which adorns rather than oppresses the legend. A pert lawyer from Dumfries objected to the language as obscure: "Obscure, sir!" said Burns; "you know not the language of that great master of your own art—the devil. If you had a witch for your client you would not be able to manage ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... being sorry when he saw him stretched out stiff near his home in the woodpile. "He was a pert little rascal;" said Jim. "I did kind o' hate to kill him; but he should have stayed with his own folks, if he wanted to be let alone. It's ...
— The Hunter Cats of Connorloa • Helen Jackson
... those, perchance the most hopeless of all sinners, who practise such an exemplary system of outward duties, that even a deadly crime may be hidden from their own sight and remembrance, under this unreal frostwork. Yet he now finds his place. Why do that pair of flaunting girls, with the pert, affected laugh and the sly leer at the by-standers, intrude themselves into the same rank with yonder decorous matron, and that somewhat prudish maiden? Surely these poor creatures, born to vice as their sole and natural inheritance, can be no fit ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... What does that mean?" said the housekeeper, shaking her head. "Is the child ignorant or pert, ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... one can scarcely question, was evolved from the military requirements of early Teutonic society; and, as private war died down, so the status of the page became impaired, until in the reign of Elizabeth we find him a pampered domestic, whose pert air and gaudy dress represented all that was left of a formidable troop armed with sword and buckler. Ben Jonson deplores and ridicules the transformation in lines with which the present volume may well close. The host in the play has refused his son as page to ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... Logie Pert, near Montrose, the son of a shoemaker, bred for the Church; was a disciple of Locke and Jeremy Bentham; wrote a "History of British India," "Elements of Political Economy," and an "Analysis of the Human Mind"; held an important lucrative post ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Saucy and pert beside her walked the little brownie Marie, looking for all the world like the bobbing daffies in her white basket. One wanted to sing the old nursery rhyme: "Daffy-down-dilly has come to town," for they were nodding a friendly greeting from her hat, and seemed to lend their golden ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... missin' from our brand of chivalry; We don't make a pert procession when we're movin' up the forces; We've no pretty, pawin' stallion, 'n' no pennants flowin' free, 'N' no giddy, gaudy bedquilts make a circus of ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... stood a photograph of a popular actress, pert and pretty. The sight of it sent Lena's thoughts afield into ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... The pert maid decided to be civil at least, and invited Jordan to enter. But she left him standing in the hall while she went in search of Miss Burnett. Jordan gazed about him in amazement. He had never been in any place like this before. The hall was wonderful enough, and through ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Jenny's pert little nose seemed to turn up more than ever as she walked away, for she had not beaten her old playfellow quite as badly as usual. There were several sharp things on the very tip of her tongue, but she was too much put out and vexed to ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... kindred with a Cheshire cheese. He held that the swallows slept all the winter at the bottom of the horse-pond; talked, like Raleigh, Grenville, and other low persons, with a broad Devonshire accent; and was in many other respects so very ignorant a youth, that any pert monitor in a national school might have had a hearty laugh at him. Nevertheless, this ignorant young savage, vacant of the glorious gains of the nineteenth century, children's literature and science made easy, and, worst of all, of those improved views of English history ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... steamer anchored boldly in the bay—a pert steamer with a saucy, off-duty air. Certain circumstances forewarned us of a "formal call." So that the visit should not partake of an actual surprise a boat containing ladies and gentlemen was rowed ostentatiously across to land awkwardly at such a point as would herald the fact and ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... Wilkins's, a chamberlain in white gloves bravely soiled the gloves by seizing the vile brass handle of its door. He bowed to Edward Henry and assisted him to alight on to a crimson carpet. The driver of the taxi glanced with pert and candid scorn at the chamberlain, but Edward Henry looked demurely aside, and then in abstraction mounted ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... you are pert and deceitful, for you have kept secret from me that which I had a right to learn; also you have too good an opinion of your own looks, which as I tell you now for the last time, are nothing compared to mine at your age, or even to those of my daughter Suzanne, your grandmother. ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... spotless virtue half the insolence which the King of England bore from concubines who, while they owed everything to his bounty, caressed his courtiers almost before his face. He had patiently endured the termagant passions of Barbara Palmer and the pert vivacity of Eleanor Gwynn. Lewis thought that the most useful envoy who could be sent to London, would be a handsome, licentious, and crafty Frenchwoman. Such a woman was Louisa, a lady of the House of Querouaille, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... don't wonder Men of Quality and Estate resort to Will's, for really they make the best Figure there; an indifferent thing from 'em, passes for a Witty Jest, and sets presently the whole Company a Laughing. Thus we admire the pert Talk of Children, because we ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... that those same rouge-finished queens of the ballet would describe us, and how they 'worked' us for a wine supper, to other jays, and that no doubt they have done so to one or a dozen since that night? They were pert and saucy, it is true, and up to date so far as slang goes, but did ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... the bell timidly, and in a moment or so a pert girl with a dirty cap on her head came ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... been seen this winter. He was working among the stumps of trees at the brink of the river, under the ice which had been left clinging to the trees when the high water receded. There was no mistaking his beautiful coat of cinnamon brown, his pert manner, his tail which was a little more than straight up, pointing towards his head; a little mite of a bird, how does he keep his little body from freezing in the furious winter storms? He seemed perfectly happy, with his two sharp, shrill, impatient "quip quaps," much shriller ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... frank smile and said in his cheery voice: 'My name is Oliver Whyte, sir.' My heart went out to him after his hearty greeting, and we soon became fast friends. Then he introduced me to his dear old wife, and a pert little kid—" ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... of propriety; she only knew what was thought vulgar or genteel at Suxberry House; and the authority of Mrs. Suxberry (for that was the name of her schoolmistress) she quoted as incontrovertible upon all occasions. Without reflecting upon what was wrong or right, she decided with pert vivacity on all subjects; and firmly believed that no one could know or could learn any thing who had not been educated precisely as she had been. She considered her mother as an inferior personage, destitute of genteel accomplishments: her mother considered her as a model of ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... gay time. She introduced Lemuel to them, and after a few moments of high civility and distance they treated him familiarly, as Statira's beau. Their talk, after that he was now used to, was flat and foolish, and their pert ease incensed him. He came away bruised and burning, and feeling himself unfit to breathe the refined and gentle air to which he returned in Mr. Corey's presence. Then he would vow in his heart never to expose himself to such things again; but he ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... readers in the perplexed details of the life of a not unworthy lady, I must do more than remind them that they do know, or might have known, or should have known the antecedents of my personages. I must let them understand how it came to pass that so pretty, so pert, so gay, so good a girl as Mary Lovelace, without any great fault on her part, married a man so grim, so gaunt, so sombre, and so old as Lord George Germain. It will not suffice to say that she had done ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... art to be! Is Royalty grown a mere wooden Scarecrow; whereon thou, pert scald-headed crow, mayest alight at pleasure, and ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... many idle people were standing about that she could not bear to mingle with them. Had it been only the Holt vassalage, either their feeling would have been one with her own, or they would have made way for her, but there were some pert nursery maids gaping about with the children from Beauchamp, whence the heads of the family had been absent all the winter and spring, leaving various nurses and governesses in charge. Honora could ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said this lifted himself quickly up in his seat, and nodded his head mysteriously as he looked into his companion's face. It was as much as though he should say, "I see you are surprised, but so it is." Then he went on. "She does, the pert poppet!" This was almost too much for Silverbridge; but still he contained himself. "She won't look at me because she has got it into her head that perhaps some day she may be Duchess of Omnium! That of course is out ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... reason, my pert young woman!" mentally retorted Mrs, Farnum, for her companion's last words had been rather coldly uttered. Then she said aloud, ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... father himself. He was, as handsome men often are, the absolute opposite of Don Juan, and proud of his virtue. But by as much as he was unlike Don Juan, he was charming as a Gascon, when it came to a spirited discussion of pert and often most daring themes, with young ladies, of whom he made but one requirement, that they be handsome, otherwise it was not worth his while. I inherited from him this inclination to enter into ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... looking over a boy's theme, it is difficult not to take him more seriously than he deserves or perhaps desires. One would think that Mr. Butler was the travelled and laborious observer of Nature, and Mr. Darwin the pert speculator who takes all his facts at ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... followed in all her rambles by a diminutive nondescript kind of dog—a tiny, long-haired, silky looking creature, the colour of coffee freshly ground, no bigger than a large squirrel, with brilliant black eyes, bushy tail, and a pert little face, which greatly resembled ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... as a rule, about other folks' funerals, but—" She looked at him curiously. "It's cold here; come in a minute." There was no hint of vulgar nonsense, but something very earnest in the pert little face that had been so pretty. They went in. "Order drinks," she said aside, ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... warrant," said Jucundus; "a pert, forward imp. 'Twas Gete against Briton. Much good comes of schooling! He's a wicked one already. Ah, the new generation! I don't know where ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... of twenty hardly seemed to expect an answer; but the man addressed in this pert manner, though the senior of the pair by six years, felt that the emotion throbbing in his heart must be allowed to bubble forth lest he ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... A pert little wave by the sea-shore one day, Came dashing along in its impudent way; A wee little maiden was straying too near. Said the wavelet—I'll catch you my child, never fear, "I will carry you home to a bed in the sea, ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... be sure,' replied the pert shopkeeper, 'and a pretty large all too—what could you ...
— Effie Maurice - Or What do I Love Best • Fanny Forester
... and from breaking jests on the New Testament. His expensive debaucheries forced him to have recourse to the Jews. He was soon a ruined man, and determined to try his chance as a political adventurer. In Parliament he did not succeed. His speaking, though pert, was feeble, and by no means interested his hearers so much as to make them forget his face, which was so hideous that the caricaturists were forced, in their own despite, to flatter him. As a writer, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... were all much too heavy to gallope and waltz. What impertinence this, want of grace to ascribe To the Lord of the whole Lepidopterous tribe; I too'll give a ball, and such folks to chastise, I'll not be at home to these pert butterflies. Bid the Empress[3] come hither, and we'll talk about What arrangements to make ...
— The Emperor's Rout • Unknown
... was not easily to be appeased. "I am not wont to be so browbeat," said he hotly. "This is your Squire, Master John. How comes it that you can stand there and listen to his pert talk, and say no word to chide him? Is this how you guide your household? Have you not taught him that every promise given is subject to the King's consent, and that with him only lie the springs of ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fellow of Rasta's build, very foppish and precise in his dress, with a smooth oval face like a girl's, and rather fine straight black eyebrows. He spoke perfect German, and had the best kind of manners, neither pert nor overbearing. He had a pleasant trick, too, of appealing all round the table for confirmation, and so bringing everybody into the talk. Not that he spoke a great deal, but all he said was good sense, and he had a smiling way of saying it. Once or twice he ran counter to ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... Chinese dignitary richly apparrelled, serene, bland, bearing with courteous equanimity flirtatious overtures of an unattached blonde woman at his left, and the pert coquetry of a young girl at the other side. The mother of the girl ventured meek, unheeded remonstrances between mouthfuls of ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... no fewer than three suitors, one of whom, a rich young coxcomb enters to order a drug. His real intention is to see Grilletta. He is not slow to see, that Mengino loves her too, so he sends him into the drug kitchen, in order to have Grilletta all to himself. But the pert young beauty only mocks him, and at Mengino's return Volpino is ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... the horror of fathers, husbands, and guardians, the delight of wives, daughters, and wards—in one word, the lover—the very beau-ideal of a lover; young, handsome, ardent, ready for anything, winning over strict old duennas, bribing pert waiting-maids, climbing up rope-ladders, overcoming every obstacle to reach the fair mistress of his affections, and kneeling at her feet to pour out burning protestations of love and devotion, that no mortal ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... of the countless Scots who, having been trained at home in strict frugality and stern Puritanic principles, have fought their way to success in England. He was born 6th April 1773 in the parish of Logie Pert, Forfarshire. His father, also named James Mill, was a village shoemaker, employing two or three journeymen when at the height of his prosperity. His mother, Isabel Fenton, daughter of a farmer, had been a servant in Edinburgh. Her family had some claims to superior gentility; she was fastidious, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... Robin, with a self-satisfied expression on his pert face, "this is the three-hundred-thousandth time I have ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... school education will produce all female excellencies. The fact, I take it, is this: that seeing how high in the scale these girls have been raised, one is anxious that they should be raised higher. One is surprised at their pert vulgarity and hideous airs, not because they are so low in our general estimation, but because they are so high. Women of the same class in London are humble enough, and therefore rarely offend us who are squeamish. They show by ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... a mild and placid little woman in dove-gray came walking from the bridge and handed over her penny. She eyed the skipper with interest, and cocked her head with the pert demureness of a sparrow while she studied the parrots who were ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... miles the grand monotony. Close at hand a host of tiny mounds, each tipped with reddish gold, and some few further ornamented by miniature sentry, alert and keen-eyed, tell of a prairie township already laid out and thickly populated; and at this moment every sentry is chipping his pert, querulous challenge until the disturbers of the peace are close upon him, then diving headlong into the bowels ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... a foolish action I've committed. The icy bonds of matrimony are upon me already; I feel myself turning into a fond, faithful, rational, humble, meek-spirited wife! Alas! I must now turn my head into a museum, and hang up all my smart sayings inside my brain, there to petrify, as warnings to all pert misses. Dear Mary! if ever I am good for anything, it will be to ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... got to be out of this place in half an hour, less. The fact is, Cyrus Carve has been extremely—er—pert. He's paid me a month's salary and I'm off at once. In under thirty minutes I shall be ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... cautiously (as Irish girls always do), and admitted them into the entry, where one light only was burning in a branch lamp. "Shall we go upstairs?" said Mrs. Morland. "And what for would ye go upstairs?" said the girl in a pert tone. "It's all dark there, and there's no preparations. Ye can lave your things here a-hanging on the rack. It is a party ye're expecting? Blessed are ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... which the Chancellour proponed to him. But this stamp of Mr. Patrick's was so heavy upon his brother's foot, who had ane sair toe which was painful to him, wherefore he looked to him and said, 'Ye were over pert to stampe upon my foot; were you out of the King's presence I would overtake you upon the mouth.' Mr. Patrick, hearing the vain words of his brother, pled on his knees before the King and the Justice, and ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... nothing of these; but I know that in my time a pert French satirist, one Boileau, made so free with your character, that I tore his book for having abused my favourite hero. And now this saucy Englishman has libelled us both. But I have a proposal to make to you for the reparation of our honour. ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... his neck, his crisp hair against my lips, I whispered my story softly, for this was such a fine and splendid secret, that not even the shining blackbirds, and the pert robins in the furrows were going to get to hear a word of it. Before I had finished Laddie was breathing as Flos does when he races her the limit. He sat motionless for a long time, while over ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... putty consid'able pert o' it air made up o' Mormings; an' they'll be boun' to the Salt Lake. We kin foller them an' drop t'other. In the Morming settlements, we kin swop our unyforms for suthin' else, an' the berra too. Es to the knepsacks an' cartridge-box, I guess as how ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... kingly-poor flout! Will they not, think you, hang themselves to-night? Or ever, but in vizors, show their faces? This pert Berowne was out of ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... dung-ball of his dirty thoughts along His tiny sphere of grovelling sympathies— Has knocked himself full-butt, with blundering trouble, Against a mountain he can neither double Nor ever hope to scale. So like a free, Pert, self-conceited scarabaeus, he Takes it into his horny head to swear There's no such thing as ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... came a crumbling At the back of his mouth and a rumbling, And a sort of sound like a grumbling, And out there popped, as pert as you please, A milky back tooth that had taken its ease For too many weeks and months and years. An object, when loose, of anxious fears, It had now debouched and lost its place At the back of a startled schoolboy's face. Oh, out it popped, And down it dropped In the middle of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... were times when everything about you and your house hurt me. You had so many dear little things I couldn't have. Do you know—it's ridiculous—but I had an especial spite at those china dogs of yours. There were times when I wanted to catch up Gog and Magog and bang their pert black noses together! Oh, you smile, Anne—but it was never funny to me. I would come here and see you and Gilbert with your books and your flowers, and your household goods, and your little family jokes—and your love ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... discussion was in progress, and meanwhile the door of the study was open—an unprecedented circumstance. As I approached the portals I could hear loud voices raised, for mingled with the pert, venomous accents of De Griers were Mlle. Blanche's excited, impudently abusive tongue and the General's plaintive wail as, apparently, he sought to justify himself in something. But on my appearance every one stopped speaking, ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... stage soubrette, demurely pert from crown to sole. Possibly—just possibly—she guessed; probably she guessed nothing. The suggestion was no more than a suggestion in the mind of the watcher of all these ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... and body of dust-coloured feathers, and head and throat of a most lovely turquoise blue; it has also a little wattle of these blue feathers standing straight out on each side of its head, which gives it a very pert appearance. Then there is the emu-wren, all sad-coloured, but quaint, with the tail-feathers sticking up on end, and exactly like those of an emu; on the very smallest scale, even to the peculiarity of two feathers growing out of the same little quill. I was much amused by the varieties ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... for Young Working Girls—it's all very well to be sympathetic with them, but when it comes to a settlement-house, and Heaven knows I have given them all the counsel and suggestions I could, though some of the professional settlement workers are as pert as they can be, and I really do believe some of them think they are trying to end poverty entirely, just as though the Lord would have sent poverty into the world if He didn't have a very good reason for it—you will remember the Bible says, 'The ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... him. He was distinctly handsome, with the boy-doll style of beauty—curly, dark hair, rosy cheeks, and a small, very carefully tended mustache. He wore a very long and fashionable coat, and was evidently pleasantly conscious of its flop around his ankles. His handsome face wore an expression of pert triumph as he passed on into the inner office.... Carroll, who had lingered with an idle curiosity to ascertain who was the successful applicant, heard a voice so near his ear that it whistled. The voice was ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... again, presuming that no noise in Oxford could be made but scholars must do it,"—a hoary misconception still cherished, or until recently, by the Metropolitan Police and the Oxford City Bench. In this instance a proctor intervened, and quelled the disturbance by sending 'two young pert townsmen' to prison; "and quickly came to my chamber, and perceiving my boy designed for a gown, told me that it was for the preservation of such fine youths as he that the proctors made so bold with gentlemen's lodgings." The squire had ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... more obviously, and she accordingly compelled the poor girl to do all the drudgery of the household. It was she who washed the dishes, and scrubbed down the stairs, and polished the floors in my lady's chamber and in those of the two pert misses, her daughters; and while the latter slept on good feather beds in elegant rooms, furnished with full-length looking-glasses, their sister lay in a wretched garret on an old straw mattress. Yet the poor thing ...
— Cinderella • Henry W. Hewet
... all the specialties of the old kind, but in a higher degree. So they named this one Eutamias, which means "good" or "extra good" Chipmunk. And extra good this exquisite little creature surely is in all that goes to make a charming, graceful, birdy, pert and vivacious four-foot. In everything but colours it is Eutamias or Tamias of a more intensified type. Its tail is long in proportion and carried differently, being commonly held straight up, so that the general impression one gets is of a ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... during that time sufficed to enable him to win so easy a victory, that it was some months before he had again occasion to use his fists in earnest. This time it was in the streets. He was returning home with his cousins, when a pert young clerk thought it a good joke to twitch off his cap and throw it into a shop, and was astounded when, before the cap had reached the floor, he himself ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... traverses this wild region of the park, to which a distant gate gives entrance. On descending into this unfrequented road, I was surprised to see a carriage standing there. A thin, sly postilion, with that pert, turned-up nose which the old caricaturist Woodward used to attribute to the gentlemen of Tewkesbury, was leaning on his horses, and looked hard at me as I passed. A lady who sat within looked out, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... little roughly, it may be, but still—properly. Directly it grew familiar, he became careless; and he had a most wilful habit of aggravating his customers, which could not, of course, continue without seriously injuring his trade. For instance, when some pert young puppy would come forward, and civilly enough request his "one or two penn'orth of natives," Bruin would first insist on having the money paid down, and would then tantalise his customer by offering him the opened oyster and hastily withdrawing it just as the impatient ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... was right behind, and they saw him), and he stood right up in the sleigh and shook his fist, he was so mad; but afterwards he bu'st out laughin'. It did look kind of curi's; it wa'n't bigger than a front entry, and it set up so pert right there on the heater-piece, as if he was calc'latin' to farm it. The folks said Susan Ellen covered up her face in her shawl and began to cry. I s'pose the pore thing was discouraged. Joseph was awful mad,—he was kind of laughing and cryin' together. Our folks stopped ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... A pert young Mouse, to whom the world was new, Had once a near escape, if all be true. He told his mother, as I now tell you: "I crossed the mountains that beyond us rise, And, journeying onwards, bore me ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... New England yankee mind could concoct such humours and fascinatingly pert phrases as are found here. They are like the chatterings of the interrupted squirrel in the tree-hole at nut-time. There is so much of high gossip in these poetic turns of hers, and so, throughout her books, one finds a multitude ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... to hear no more from you, Miss Pert! Go to Miss Loring, and tell her that she will confer a favor by seeing me this evening. I can receive ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... not easily to be appeased. "I am not wont to be so browbeat," said he hotly. "This is your Squire, Master John. How comes it that you can stand there and listen to his pert talk, and say no word to chide him? Is this how you guide your household? Have you not taught him that every promise given is subject to the King's consent, and that with him only lie the springs of life and death? If he is sick, you at least ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the domestic, with pert familiarity, and took her time in arranging the shade of the lamp. When she returned from the door it was to announce, smilingly, that Mr. Cobb ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... on which he was working, and went out to see if he were needed in front. He sold a lip-stick to a pert miss who from sheer instinct made eyes at him, and he wished that Helen May had such plump cheeks—though he thanked God she had not the girl's sophisticated eyes. (Yes, a bungalow out there against the hills ought ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... more about it." He wandered across the room, pulling a leaf from the azaleas, stopping at the window for a long look out. The wind was blowing some riotous young clouds over the sky like inarticulate shouts. There was an arrogant bird in the elm; there were pert crocus-buds in the window-boxes. The place was full of foolhardy little dare-devils who trusted their fate and might never find it out. After all, that was the way to live—as long as one was allowed. He turned suddenly with his whimsical smile. "I look ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... the pert assurance of a pretty girl who is only playing the servant "to oblige." The agent looked irritably at the ugly gap in the fine tracing overhead, ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... small pert man, was the skipper, with a sharp face, an edge to his voice, and two little points of eyes that glowed. Salt water had not drenched his dry cockney speech, and he was a gamin of the sea and as keen to its gammon ways as ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... mirthful meed Had won, ere Tibbald of Stow,— With look as pert as the pouncing glede When he eyeth the chick below,— Scraped his crowd, And clear and loud, As the merle-cock shrill, Or the bell from the hill, Thus tuned his throat to his rough sire's praise— His sire the ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... saw his face, he became suddenly and totally disconcerted; walked two or three steps backward, and still gazed on Ravenswood with an air of fear and wonder, which had totally banished from his features their usual expression of pert vivacity. ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... I don't know if I make myself clear at all.... You may think I was working up a fanciful theory just because a pert servant maid was getting a little wayward, but it wasn't only that—Lord, no! It was a great deal more than that, and it was just beginning; ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... of homesick, don't it, this talk about bills and screws and bolts and such? Wa'n't teasin' for your old job back again, was you, Al? Cal'late he could have it, couldn't he, Cap'n? We'll need somebody to heave a bucket of water on Issy pretty soon; he's gettin' kind of pert and uppish again. Pretty much ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... women now? Tell an English creve that Miss Maria is clever at a custard, and he will sneer at her. No. She must be witty, pert; able to give him as good as he sends, as people say. Young Dumas has done a very great deal of this harm; and he has made a fortune by it. He has brought the Casino into the drawing-room, given ces dames a position in society, and ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... "What a wicked, satirical, pert young man you have become! Comme vous voila forme!" said the young lady, "How different from Arthur Pendennis of the country! Ah! I think I like Arthur Pendennis of the country best, though!" and she ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a man who had charge of my baggage, in the passage-way between the baggage-room and the colored passengers' apartment. I saw a white man with a pert, flurried manner and coarse look ascend the steps of the cars, and behind him a tall graceful black man, a little older than the other, with signs of gentleness and dignity in his appearance. As he stooped and turned, his air and carriage would ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... pointed me out, I had slept till E'en Doomsday, a poor insignificant reptile; Half lawyer, half actor, pert, dull, and inglorious, Obscure, and unheard of—but now I'm notorious: Fame has but two gates, a white and a black one; The worst they can say is, I got in at the back one: If the end be obtained 'tis equal ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... his own importance and authority, ushered aunt Corinne and Robert into the fair, and limped after them whenever he thought they needed admonition or advice. The landlord's pert young son noticed this and made his intimates laugh at it. Besides, he was gorgeously attired in blue velvet jacket and ruffles and white trousers, and among the crowds of grown people coming and going, other children shone in resplendent ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... could have sworn, still warm from the snuggle of somebody's finger. Last of all, a fat and formidable edition of Robert Browning's poems; a tiny black domino-mask, such as masqueraders wear, and a shimmering gilt picture frame inclosing a pert yet not irreverent handmade adaptation of a certain portion of St. Paul's epistle ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... robe and a species of tinsel crown, out of which his red face looked most ludicrous as he came halting and stupefied, haying evidently been driven up in a corner and pinched rather hard; but close behind him, chuckling forth his terror and flapping his wings, came the pert little white bantam, belted and accoutred as ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... while at Briarwood Hall," she said, in her quick, pert way, "you'll learn that that's the only way to do with Old Dolliver. Make your bargain before you get into the Ark—that's what we call this stage—or he surely will overcharge you. ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... friend with a little money to enable him to buy what he might most pressingly require. At first, on seeing Pierre's cassock, the old man had growled some coarse words; but, despite his extreme feebleness, he still retained the pert chaffing spirit of the Parisian artisan: "Well, then, I'll willingly drink a drop," he said distinctly, "and have a bit of bread with it, if there's the needful; for I've lost taste of both for a couple of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... I'm sure!" piped the pig-tailed Alicia from the piano. She could talk, in her pert moments, exactly like ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... from his refuge in some lonely elm That age or injury has hollow'd deep, Where, on his bed of wool and matted leaves, He has outslept the winter, ventures forth To frisk a while, and bask in the warm sun, The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play. He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird, Ascends the neighbouring beech; there whisks his brush, And perks his ears, and stamps and scolds aloud, With all the prettiness of feign'd alarm, And ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... pretty answer this, methinks, and a pack of learned orators most sweetly gravelled. And what did the other man say? The Athenians were to choose one of two architects for a very great building they had designed; of these, the first, a pert affected fellow, offered his service in a long premeditated discourse upon the subject of the work in hand, and by his oratory inclined the voices of the people in his favour; but the other in three words: "O Athenians, what this man says, I will do."—[Plutarch, Instructions to Statesmen, c. 4.]— ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... slab of granite, and ate the luncheon we had brought, cold venison steak and bread. By and by a marvelous thing happened. A flash of wings sparkled in the air, a brave little voice challenged us cheerily, a pert tiny rock-wren flirted his tail and darted his wings and wanted to know what we were thinking of anyway to enter his especial territory. And shortly from nowhere appeared two Canada Jays, silent as the wind itself, hoping for a share in our meal. ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... a pretty creature, with bright blue eyes, and an arch expression, all the droller under her prim round cap; and Sylvester was a good deal amused with her pert bold little nods and airs. He paid a good deal of attention to her, and she in return grew more forward and chattering. It is what little girls will sometimes do under the pleasure and excitement of the notice of gentlemen, and it makes their friends very uneasy, since the only excuse ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the naked ear, three feet off. The most hideous demon (whose complexion had not only the colour, but the precise metallic lustre of an ill black-leaded stove) at last chirruped a wish for orders, which I gave. I asked the pert, active, cockney housemaid what I ought to pay them, as, being a stranger, they might overcharge me. Her scorn was sublime, 'Them nasty blacks never asks more than their regular charge.' So I asked the black-lead demon, who demanded 'two ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... having whole groves of humming-birds, tatne tigers taught to fetch and carry, pocket spying-glasses to see all that is doing in China, and a thousand other toys, which we now look upon as impracticable, and which pert posterity would laugh in ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... of a punishment than a pleasure; but for sheer discomfort this stay capped the climax. Under Zara's incompetent rule John's home had degenerated into a lawless and slovenly abode: the meals were unpalatable, the servants pert and lazy, while the children ran wild—you could hardly hear yourself speak for the racket. Whenever possible, Mahony fled the house. He lunched in town, looked up his handful of acquaintances, bought necessaries—and unnecessaries—for the voyage. He also hired a ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... who payeth first The Exchequer's pert purse-stormer: As the year wags still worse and worst ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... sure," said Mrs. Leigh, "some girls here are that pert and forward, I can't bear it myself; and yet the gentlemen all encourage it, and think it real smart. Lilla Tremaine, you ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... stunner? I'll gurgle so. What had become of that extra 20 pounds I wouldn't even try to guess. But she's right there with the svelte figure, the school girly flush, and the sparklin' eyes. Maybe it was the way the gown was built. Fits like the peel on a banana. Or the pert way she holds her head, or the general excitement of the occasion. Anyway, mighty few 20-year-old screen favorites would ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... view there are few towns more uninviting than Birmingham; for the houses are built of brick toned down to a grimy red by smoke, in long streets crossing each other at right angles,—and the few modern stone buildings and blocks of houses seem as pert and as much out of place as the few idle dandies who are occasionally met among the crowds of busy mechanics and anxious manufacturers. What neatness—cleanliness—can do for the streets, bell-pulls, and door-knockers, has been done; the foot- ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... calculated to give offense to the hermits, and perhaps lose us their advertising. Indeed, there was too lightsome a tone of flippancy all through the paper. It was plain I had undergone a considerable change without noticing it. I found myself unpleasantly affected by pert little irreverencies which would have seemed but proper and airy graces of speech at an earlier period of my life. There was an abundance of the following breed of items, and they ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... send you a good little Bit of, which I think may do you a good turn now and then. Give a look at 'Egypt of the Pharaohs' by Zincke, Vicar of a Parish near Woodbridge; the Book is written in a light, dashing (but not Cockney pert) way, easily looked over. There is a supposed Soliloquy of an English Labourer (called 'Hodge') as contrasted with the Arab, which ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... person, if not altogether innocent of an occasional display of coarseness; his wife was good-natured, and inclined at times to be melancholy. Garlan's nephew, who was thirteen years old at the time of Bertha's arrival at the little town, was a pert, good-looking boy; and his niece, a very sedate child of nine, with large, astonished eyes, conceived a strong attachment for Bertha from the very first moment ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... you'll find a pert Bookseller give himself the Airs of Judging a Performance so far, as to Condemn the Correctness of what he knows nothing of these there's a pretender to Authorship in the City, who Rules the young Fry of Biblioples about ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... part, and a choosing of positions affording means of ready retreat. And old Chumbley, still cobbling shoes in his tiny cave. On the bench before him in a row they sat and watched him while he tapped and tapped and hammered: pert little shoes piping "Be quick, be quick, we want to be toddling. You seem to have no idea, my good man, how much toddling there is to be done." Dapper boots, sighing: "Oh, please make haste, we are ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... conspicuously his inferior. She had been chamber-maid in a noble family, and had succeeded in marrying Mr. Hahn simply by the fact that she had made up her mind not to marry him. Mr. Hahn, however, was not a man to be baffled by opposition. When the pert Mariana had cut him three times at a dancing-hall, he became convinced that she was the one thing in the world which he needed to make his existence complete. After presenting him with a son, Fritz, and ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the Latitudinarian party, he was popularly regarded as the personification of the Latitudinarian spirit. This distinction he owed to the prominent place which he held in literature and politics, to the readiness of his tongue and of his pert, and above all to the frankness and boldness of his nature, frankness which could keep no secret, and boldness which flinched from no danger. He had formed but a low estimate of the character of his clerical brethren considered ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... graces, mouth primming, shoulder-setting and elbow-holding are studied, and affectation, formality, hypocrisy, and pride are acquired; and where children the most promising are presently transformed into vain, pert misses, who imagine that to perk up their heads, turn out their toes, and exhibit the ostentatious opulence of their relations, in a tawdry ball night dress, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... admiring with distant awe and spectacle of virtue and purity; but if he does so sincerely, he must also do so with the profoundest feeling of the error of his own ways, and the resolution to amend them. His admiration must be humble and silent, not pert and loquacious. Mr. Hunt praises the purity of Wordsworth as if he himself were pure, his dignity as if he also were dignified. He is always like the ball of Dung in the fable, pleasing himself, and amusing by-standers with his "nos poma natamus." For the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... of my much-regretted school-friends. When all my preparations were ready, and I had dated the first of these effusions, I was disturbed by a timid knock at the door. I laid down my pen resignedly and went to open: it was the pert housemaid, who delivered "Mrs. Hampden's request that Miss Amelia would ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... went on in company. The Crow pretended to feed along with the Pigeon, but ever and anon he would turn back, peck to bits some heap of cow-dung, and eat a fat worm. When he had got a bellyful of them, up he flies, as pert as ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... had plucked his sister's walking-hat, a pert piece of millinery froward in feathers, from the trunk of the headless Victory, where she had reposed it in ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... I fear I was pert and audacious. I once touched at supper a blazing hot teapot, which almost blistered my fingers, and I screamed with surprise and pain. Father exclaimed, "Stop that noise, Caty." I replied, "Put your fingers on that teapot—and don't kitikize." And one evening about ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... mature Venus of thirty-six, of middle height, and with the voluptuous figure of a true Viennese, with bright eyes, thick dark hair, and beautiful white teeth, while her daughter Ida, who was seventeen, had light hair and the pert little nose of the china figures of shepherdesses in the dress of the period of Louis XIV., and was short, slim, and full of French grace. Besides them and the Count, a son of twelve and his tutor were present at supper. It struck the hussar as strange that the tutor, who was a strongly-built ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... like—like anything," says downright Harry. "I never heard a young girl go on so. She made fun of everybody—hit about at young and old—so that I couldn't help telling her, sir, that in our country, leastways in Virginia (they say the Yankees are very pert), young people don't speak of their elders so. And, do you know, sir, we had a sort of a quarrel, and I'm very glad you've told me she spoke kindly of me," says Harry, shaking his friend's hand, a ready boyish emotion glowing in his cheeks and ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I like to give lodgings to a stranger in these ticklish times," said the female, in a pert, sharp key. "I'm nothing but a forlorn lone body; or, what's the same thing, there's nobody but the old gentleman at home; but a half mile farther up the road is a house where you can get entertainment, and that for nothing. I am sure 'twill be much ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... and he was in a despondent mood after one of his recurring disappointments—this time a graceful slender shape which he had earlier in the evening pursued in a flock of home-going shop-girls until she turned and revealed a pert Cockney face which bore no resemblance to Sisily's. Several hours later he paid another of his visits to Euston Square, which he believed to be the starting-point of Sisily's own wanderings. He felt closer to her in that locality because of that. From Euston Square he walked on aimlessly, ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... wintry days were beginning to lengthen, the sun rose earlier and staid up longer. Now and then a bluebird was heard twittering a welcome to the coming spring. As for the robins, they were as pert and busy as usual. The little streams were beginning to find their way out of their icy prison slowly and with trembling, as if they feared old winter might take a step and catch them, and ...
— Conscience • Eliza Lee Follen
... what in plain English the theme was? The school-boy's smart answer rather surprised her Ladyship—'What is that to you?' She replied—'How can you be so rude? I asked you very civilly a plain question, and did not expect from a school-boy such a pert answer.' The reply was, 'Indeed, my Lady, I can only answer once more, 'What is that to you?' In reality the theme was—Quid ad te pertinet!"—From Holliday's Life of the Earl ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... of the morn A butterfly (but newly born) Sat proudly perking on a rose, With pert conceit his bosom glows; His wings (all glorious to behold) Bedropt with azure, jet, and gold, Wide he displays; the spangled dew Reflects his eyes and various hue. His now forgotten friend, a snail, Beneath his house, with slimy ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... in her attitude to the others and in her own point of view, the warmth of a true, evenly-balanced nature. JESSICA is a typical second child,—nice, good, self-effacing, sympathetic, unspoiled. CLARA is her opposite,—spoiled, petulant, pretty, pert, and selfish. ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... Percy Eastman said he was called Wings "because he hadn't any feet." Susy was vexed at this remark, and Prudy, taking her part, said, "Percy is such a pert boy;" adding next moment, "What is pert?" ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... rascal, numskull, nincompoop, dunderhead, wiseacre, blockhead, jackass." As single words were not always explosive enough to make a report equal to their feelings, they had recourse to compounds;—"pert and prating popinjay," "hackneyed gutscraper," "maggot of corruption," "toad on a dung-heap," "snivelling sophisticating hound," are a few of the chain-shot which strike our eyes in turning over the yellow faded files. They are all quiet now, those eager, snarling ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... that changed the whole purpose of my life. I can see him now as he came up to me with his frank smile and said in his cheery voice: 'My name is Oliver Whyte, sir.' My heart went out to him after his hearty greeting, and we soon became fast friends. Then he introduced me to his dear old wife, and a pert little kid—" ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... miracle was reported in Valladolid. Don Luis Ramonez was not in his place in the Cafe de la Luna. Sebastian the goldsmith, Gomez the pert barber, Pepe the waiter, Micael the water-seller of the Plaza Mayor knew nothing of his whereabouts. The old priest of Las Angustias might have told if his lips had not been sealed. But in the course of the next morning it was noised about that his Worship had left the ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... pretext, and yet was vexed with the stupidity that made the witnesses so evidently find the pretext sufficient. He inwardly groaned at the delusion under which he had saddled himself with the Tragic Muse—a tragic muse who was strident and pert—and yet wished his visitors would go away and leave ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... little sigh, as she said to herself: "I don't see but I look as much like a traveler as any of them. I'm sure I don't feel in the least confused. I'm glad I'm not as ridiculously dressed as that pert-looking girl in brown. I should call it in very bad taste to wear such a rich silk as that for traveling. She doesn't look as though she had a single idea beyond dress; probably that is what is occupying her thoughts at this very moment;" and Ester's speaking face betrayed ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... careful!" Sam called. "You'll slide off and fall down in the alley if you don't look out. I come pert' near it last time we was up there. Come on down! Ain't ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... Maistre Rusticien que Sagamoni Borcan mourut iiij vint et iiij foiz et tousjourz resuscita, et a chascune foiz d'une diverse maniere de beste, et a la derreniere foyz mourut hons et devint diex, selonc ce qu'il dient.'[17] Et fist encore Messires Marc: 'A moy pert-il trop estrange chose se juesques a toutes les creances des ydolastres deust decheoir ceste grantz et saige nation. Ainsi peuent jouer Misire li filsoufe atout lour propre perte, mes a l'ore quand tiex fantaisies se respanderont es joenes bacheliers et parmy la ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... ignorant of anything ever I heard of," interrupted Casimir, bowing, and raising his glass with a sort of pert politeness. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who practise such an exemplary system of outward duties, that even a deadly crime may be hidden from their own sight and remembrance, under this unreal frostwork. Yet he now finds his place. Why do that pair of flaunting girls, with the pert, affected laugh and the sly leer at the by-standers, intrude themselves into the same rank with yonder decorous matron, and that somewhat prudish maiden? Surely these poor creatures, born to vice as their sole and ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... called Tinette, but in such an ill- tempered voice that the maid came tripping forward with even more mincing steps than usual, but she looked so pert that even Fraulein Rottenmeier did not venture to scold her, which only made ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... tea was just set for her on a pert little table, with its tripod of legs in an attitude, which she insinuated after office-hours, into the company of the stern, leathern-topped, long board-table that bestrode the middle of the room. The light porter placed the tea-tray on it, knuckling ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... or clenched such claw-like fingers. Was this the best she could give Arthur by way of son and heir? Yet she looked as proud and exulting as if he had been the loveliest of children, and the little wretch himself had a pert, lively air of speculation, as ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unknown: 60 She was my friend; I taught her first to spread Upon her sallow cheeks enlivening red: I introduced her to the park and plays; And, by my interest, Cozens made her stays. Ungrateful wretch! with mimic airs grown pert, She dares to steal ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... any sucking Socrates, why it is that these feathered choristers have their "revival seasons," and are terrible backsliders during the moulting period. When you looked out of the nursery-window, into the poultry-yard, and heard the noisy confabulation of the motherly hens and pert pullets, you should be prepared to state upon what theological principles it is that psalmody is not the wont of the Gallinacae. Are the Biddies given over to a reprobate mind, because you don't happen to like their vocalization? Is it only the Piccolomini and Linds of the feathered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... other hand if Kitty had not been related to me in some way I should have missed a pleasant intimacy. I should probably very seldom see her if she were the daughter of a casual acquaintance, and when I did see her she would be shy, perhaps, or pert. I should almost certainly be awkward. I am, I regret to say, fifty years of age. Kitty is just sixteen. Some kind of relationship is necessary if there is to be real friendship between an elderly man and a young girl Uncles, if they did not exist in nature, would have to be invented ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... beyond their pates. The grave old man he makes a bustle, And his wise sentence in must justle. Up starts th' Apprentice boy and he Says boldly so and so't must be. The dealer in old shoes to utter His saying too makes no small sputter. Then comes the pert mechanick blade, And contradicts what all ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... specially for her use by her son and his friend Tim Lumpy. It stood at the foot of the garden, from which could be had a magnificent view of the neighbouring lake. Rich foliage permitted the slanting sunbeams to quiver through the bower, and little birds, of a pert conceited nature, twittered among the same. Martha Mild—the very embodiment of meek, earnest simplicity, and still a mere child in face though almost a woman in years—sat on a wooden stool at Mrs Frog's feet reading ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... sophisticated, nervous, product of a society perhaps not quite as free and Nietzschean as it deemed itself, but yet cultivated and illuminated and refined, it nevertheless seemed exuberantly sound. The sweet, broad, diatonic idiom, the humor, the sleepy Bavarian accent, the pert, naive, little folk-tunes it employed, the tranquil, touching, childlike tones, the close of "Tod und Verklaerung," with its wondrous unfolding of corolla upon corolla, were refreshing indeed after all the burning chromaticism of Wagner, the ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... I see at the threshold? It is not a dripping love, and I am not an old Anacreon; but it is a very pretty little boy of about ten years old. He is alone; he raises his face to look at me. His cheeks are blushing; but his little pert nose gives one an idea of mischievous pleasantry. He has feathers in his cap, and a great lace-ruff on his jacket. The pretty little fellow! He holds in both arms a bundle as big as himself, and asks me if I am Monsieur ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... act the deferential lover with more delicate or graceful attention. Poor fellow, the pert, intruding sparrows plague him abominably; and really it becomes almost an affair of police that some measures should be adopted for their exclusion. He is subject to fits, too, and suddenly, without the least apparent warning, falls ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... pert—probably an older form. Bartlett cites an example of peart as far back as Sir Philip Sidney; and Halliwell finds it in various English dialects. Davies, afterward president of Princeton College, describes Dr. Lardner, in 1754, as "a little pert old gent." I do not know that Dr. Daries pronounced his pert as though it were peart, but he uses it in the sense it has in the text, viz., bright-witted, intelligent. The general sense of peart is lively, ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... be witty, but only succeed in being pert, are insufferable; and as for attempts to be comic they are disgraceful in women whether they succeed or fail. The comic is ungainly and exaggerated, and so is in some sort related to the sublime. The elephant is comic, the camel and the giraffe are ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... Agricola. "It implies affiliation with Americains in matters of business and of government! It implies the exchange of social amenities with a race of upstarts! It implies a craven consent to submit the sacredest prejudices of our fathers to the new-fangled measuring-rods of pert, imported theories upon moral and political progress! It implies a listening to, and reasoning with, the condemners of some of our most time-honored and respectable practices! Reasoning with? N-a-hay! but Honore has positively sat down and eaten with them! What?—and h-walked out into the ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... the service seem almost burlesque. When a brisk little creature comes into a pew with hair frizzed till it stands on end in a most startling manner, rattling strings of beads and bits of tinsel, mounting over all some pert little hat with a red or green feather standing saucily upright in front, she may look exceedingly pretty and piquante; and, if she came there for a game of croquet or a tableau-party, would be all in very good taste; but as she comes to confess that she is a miserable sinner, that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... the dayflower, the spiderwort opens for part of a day only. In the morning it is wide awake and pert; early in the afternoon its petals have begun to retreat within the calyx, until presently they become "dissolved in tears," like Job or the traditional widow. What was flower only a few hours ago is now a fluid jelly that trickles at the touch. Tomorrow fresh buds ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... named Thomas Read, alias Cutbert, about 25 or 30 Years of Age, 5 Feet, 4 Inches high, well set, grey Eyes, large Nose, and had short brown curl'd Hair. He is supposed to be in Boston, or some of the Northern Governments; is a Jeweller, and Motto-Ring-Engraver, and is an artful talkative pert Fellow;—can write pretty well, and has doubtless help'd himself to a Discharge, Pass, or any other Writing to deceive, and suit his Purpose; His Apparel is probably genteel, as he had Money with him, a Watch in his Pocket, and a large Stock of Pride; By what ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... bite you, I'll kill you, I snap and I spring: If I only could catch you, You rude saucy thing! If you were not so little, So cunning and spry, I'd punish you quickly, Pert wretch! you should die. ...
— The Nursery, June 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 6 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... asked. He tossed his hat into the waste-basket. He picked up my old chalk pipe from the floor, gave the stem a wipe or two on his knee, filled the bowl from the tobacco-box at his side, and said to me in a tone of pert command: ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thick hazel copses; occasionally, through a gap, he had a view of a great valley, all wild with wood; once or twice he passed a timbered farmhouse, with tall brick chimneys. The country round about was much invaded by new, pert houses, but there were none here; and Hugh supposed that this road, which seemed the only track into the valley, was of so forbidding a steepness that it had not occurred to any one to settle there. The road became ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... home it must have been, with Lucy reigning over it in her pert self-sufficiency, Gilbert and Sophy running riot and squabbling, and Maria Meadows coming in on them with her well-meant worries ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... take a strong line. This kind of raillery must be stopped. He must steer between the serious and the flippant. He hated to be pert; on the other hand, to be solemn would be offensive to Lucy—which he would not be. For James was a gentleman. "Mabel, my dear, you stretch the privileges of a guest—" a promising beginning, he thought; but Lucy pitied him plunging there, and cut ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... loves to linger about the orchard; and, sitting upright on the topmost stone in the wall, or on the tallest stake in the fence, chipping up an apple for the seeds, his tail conforming to the curve of his back, his paws shifting and turning the apple, he is a pretty sight, and his bright, pert appearance atones for all the mischief he does. At home, in the woods, he is the most frolicsome and loquacious. The appearance of anything unusual, if, after contemplating it a moment, he concludes it not dangerous, excites his unbounded mirth and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... Essex dared to demand the sacrifice of Raleigh as the price of his own devotion is best described by the new favourite in his own words. Raleigh had now been made Captain of the Guard, and we have to imagine him standing at the door in his uniform of orange-tawny, while the pert and pouting boy is half declaiming, half whispering, in the ear of the Queen, whose beating heart forgets to remind her that she might be the mother of one of her lovers and the grandmother ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... a feite sa fame, Mais il l'apele amie et dame, Que por ce ne pert ele mie Que il ne l'aint come s'amie, Et ele lui autresi Con l'an doit feire son ami: Et chascun jor lor amors crut, N'onques cil celi ne mescrut, Ne ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... wren, the first time he had been seen this winter. He was working among the stumps of trees at the brink of the river, under the ice which had been left clinging to the trees when the high water receded. There was no mistaking his beautiful coat of cinnamon brown, his pert manner, his tail which was a little more than straight up, pointing towards his head; a little mite of a bird, how does he keep his little body from freezing in the furious winter storms? He seemed perfectly happy, with his two ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... knotted oak with his trunk, but the tree closed upon that member, detaining it, and causing the hapless Elphas Africanus intense pain. He shook the forest with his trumpeting, and all the beasts gathered around him. "Ah, ha, my friend," said a pert Chimpanzee, "you have got your trunk checked, I see." "My children," said a temperate Camel to her young, "let this awful example teach you to shun the bole." "Does it hurt much?" said a compassionate Gnu. "Ah, it does; it does; it must; I gnu it; I ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... would make him closely follow on Montigny, and the first of those denounced by the Prior to fall into the toils. We may suppose, at least, that it was not long thereafter; we may suppose him competed for between lay and clerical Courts; and we may suppose him alternately pert and impudent, humble and fawning, in his defence. But at the end of all supposing, we come upon some nuggets of fact. For first, he was put to the question by water. He who had tossed off so many cups of white Baigneux or red ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Next the sash was scornfully untied, and tightened to suggest something resembling a waist. The chastened bows that had been squat, dowdy, spiritless, were given tweaks, flirts, bracing little pokes and dabs, till, acknowledging a master hand, they stood up, piquant, pert, smart, alert! ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... because Coleridge's daughter was right in calling it a mere 'girl's exercise'; because it is just that and no more, ... no expression whatever of my nature as it ever was, ... pedantic, and in some things pert, ... and such as altogether, and to do myself justice (which I would fain do of course), I was not in my whole life. Bad books are never like their writers, you know—and those under-age books are generally bad. Also I have found it hard work to get into expression, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... magnified their sufferings, she, by a vivid imagination, placed herself in the path of fortune and obtained the thing she demanded. The simple country schoolhouse that year, dreary and cheerless enough to the pert Miss who had come out from Topeka to teach there, and incidentally to collect twenty-five dollars a month from the school board, was to be the scene of the initial change in Lizzie ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... came hopping up. Another dozen steps, and—It was beautifully dressed in one piece of yellow and brown that reached almost to its feet, with a bit left at the top to form a hood, out of which its pert face peeped impudently; oho, so they came in their Sunday clothes. He drew so near that he could hear it cooing: thought itself as ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... was, however, always necessary that the person so signalized should be submissive. Now, Mrs. Carroll, Mr. Grey's sister, had long since shown that she was not submissive enough, nor were the girls, the eldest of whom was a pert, ugly, well-grown minx, now about eighteen years old. The second sister, who was seventeen, was supposed to be a beauty, but which of the two was the more odious in the eyes of their cousin it would be ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... acres of garden, surrounded by a very high, red-brick wall. It is one of those houses of which there used to be scores within the immediate neighbourhood of London—of which there still are dozens, although, alas! they are yearly disappearing to make room for gay rows of pert, upstart villas, whose tawdry flashiness ill replaces the sedate respectability of their last-century predecessors. But, uncoveted by the contractor's lawless eye, untouched by the builder's desecrating hand, Walpole Lodge stands on, as it did a hundred years ago, hidden behind the shelter ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... "Now, Miss Pert, I want you to listen to me!" That was Mrs. Ladybug's greeting to Betsy Butterfly on one of the most delightful days of the whole summer. "It's my unpleasant duty—" said Mrs. Ladybug, who by that time was enjoying herself thoroughly—"it's my unpleasant duty to tell you that people are ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... back, stared me full in the face, and bent his head, saying, 'Mr. Barry Lyndon, I believe;' turned on his heel, and began talking about the state of the weather to his mother, whom he always styled 'Your Ladyship.' She was angry at this pert bearing, and, when they were alone, rebuked him sharply for not shaking hands ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... want the lot?' says the chap in the shop, a reg'lar little dandy-sprat, an' so pert as a jay-pie in June. ''Cos us makes a reducshun on ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... see more of Newman as a Professor in class, I had arrived at the condition of a pert and very foolish boy of sixteen who had made up his mind to be an artist and failed altogether to take advantage of the splendid opportunities before him. I attended Newman's classes; saw him every day; might have acquired the knowledge ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... service of the bravest Knights and Princes. There, besides the brown-haired, fair-skinned English boy, was the quick fiery Welsh child, who owned an especial allegiance to the Prince; the broad blue-eyed Fleming, whose parents rejoiced in the fame of the son of Philippa of Hainault; the pert, lively Gascon, and the swarthy Navarrese mountaineer—all brought together in close and ever-changing contrast of countenance, ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and Laplace,—your opinion has some value; if you do not know these, you are not entitled to give any opinion on the subject. Whenever any skeptic or bigot claims to be heard on the questions of intellect and morals, we ask if he is familiar with the books of Plato, where all his pert objections have once for all been disposed of. If not, he has no right to our time. Let him go and find ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... or sufficiently drilled, yet, in her routines. But she had a pert, appealing face, a quick smile; her hair was brushed close to her head. She was a cute, utterly bold pixy to remember smiling at you—just you—like a spirit of luck and love, far out ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... into the parlour. They found him sitting with a daughter of his friend's, about three years old, on his knee, whom he was teaching the alphabet from a horn book: at a little distance stood a sister of hers, some years older. "Get you away, miss," said he to this last; "you are a pert gossip, and I will have nothing to do with you."—"Nay," answered she, "Nancy is your favourite; you are quite in love with Nancy."—"Take away that girl," said he to her father, whom he now observed to have entered the room; "she ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... whose tongue knew no control, With golden wing and satin poll, A last year's bird who ne'er had tried What marriage means, thus pert replied: "Methinks the gentleman," quoth she, "Opposite in the appletree, By his good will would keep us single, Until yonder heavens and earth shall mingle, Or (which is likelier to befall) Until death exterminate us all. I marry without more ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... readier belief, as he had, instead of desiring her to recall Jenny, professed a satisfaction in her being dismissed, saying, she was grown of little use as a servant, spending all her time in reading, and was become, moreover, very pert and obstinate; for, indeed, she and her master had lately had frequent disputes in literature; in which, as hath been said, she was become greatly his superior. This, however, he would by no means allow; and as he called her persisting in the right, obstinacy, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... walk and showed her the new church, but Mary thought the church ugly, and the outside view of Redding as unpleasant as the inside one. Dull streets, small houses everywhere; no gardens, except now and then a single bed, edged with a row of stiff cockle-shells by way of fence, and planted with pert sweet-williams or crown imperials. These Mary thought were worse than no flowers at all. Every thing smelt of fish. The very sea was made ugly by warehouses and shabby wharves. The people they met were strangers; and, altogether, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... to controvert the late act of parliament? Mr. Craig answered, That they would find fault with any thing repugnant to God's word; at which, the earl of Arran started up on his feet, and said, They were too pert; that he would shave their head, pair their nails, and cut their toes, and make them an example unto all who should disobey the king's command and his council's orders, and forthwith charged them to appear before the king at Falkland, on the ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... father was in New York and she, consequently, was alone. They pitied her, in a covert sort of fashion, because her father was going to get married again, especially Mrs. White and Lillian. Lillian was a very pretty girl, with a pert carriage of blond head, and a ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Hutchinson):—"You ask about the editor of the Lond. I know of none. This first specimen [of a new series] is flat and pert enough to justify subscribers, who grudge at ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... much be a slight promising the peaple to let them sy a horse wt its taille wheir its head sould be: that of on Martin Merry, who on a tyme pressing to win in to sie the King, the great Tresorier of England was at the door, who seing him so pert demanded him whither he would go; he replied, he would sie the King; the Thersorer told him he could not sie the King; then, he replied, I know what I'le do then; the thresorer thinking he was bravado'ing him, demanded him what can ye do, Sir; he answered, I'le go back the ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... pictures that pursue the homeless one from house to house—The Huguenot Lovers, The First Quarrel, The Wedding Breakfast, Psyche at the Fountain. The mantel's chastely severe outline was ingloriously veiled behind some pert drapery drawn rakishly askew like the sashes of the Amazonian ballet. Upon it was some desolate flotsam cast aside by the room's marooned when a lucky sail had borne them to a fresh port—a trifling vase or two, pictures of actresses, a medicine bottle, some stray cards ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... young." Among ducks the sexual distinction of voice is remarkable; for, while the quack of the female is loud and sonorous, the voice of the drake is inward and harsh, and feeble, and scarce discernible. The cock turkey struts and gobbles to his mistress in a most uncouth manner; he hath also a pert and petulant note when he attacks his adversary. When a hen turkey leads forth her young brood she keeps a watchful eye; and if a bird of prey appear, though ever so high in the air, the careful mother announces the enemy with ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... Many a young soldier and many a lass "paired off" in little nooks and corners among the stacks of bales and boxes, but at the table nearest the staging all seemed gay good humor. A merry little woman with straw-colored hair and pert, tip-tilted nose and much vivacity and complexion, had apparently taken the lead in the warfare of chaff and fun. Evidently she was no stranger to most of the officers. Almost as evidently, to a very close observer who stood a few paces away, she was no intimate of the group of women who with ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... thinking to myself there is one of those who truly have power to remit sins. I will not repeat the fond things often written about children. Not all of them are like the infant angels of Bellini or Filippino Lippi or Carpaccio; some indeed are strident, pert, without charm or candour, not doves but little jays; but for the loveliness of those who have smiled upon me, whether rich or poor, whether wild or tended flowers, I shall ever hold the whole ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... sympathetic with them, but when it comes to a settlement-house, and Heaven knows I have given them all the counsel and suggestions I could, though some of the professional settlement workers are as pert as they can be, and I really do believe some of them think they are trying to end poverty entirely, just as though the Lord would have sent poverty into the world if He didn't have a very good reason for it—you will remember the Bible says, 'The poor you always have with you,' and as Florence ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... a trifle snobbish and stand-offish with some of the pert young fellow-pupils, but before long her opinion of them increased to a respect ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... one occasion he met his match in a pert, jolly, keen-eyed son of Erin, who was up as a witness in a case of dispute in the matter of a horse deal. Curran was anxious to break down the credibility of this witness, and thought to do it by making ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... within her, she exerted every power she had to keep in the full understanding of what was going on, of what she was asked, and of what she answered. With all her faculties preternaturally alive and sensitive, she heard the next question from the pert young barrister, who was delighted to have the examination ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... guyver missin' from our brand of chivalry; We don't make a pert procession when we're movin' up the forces; We've no pretty, pawin' stallion, 'n' no pennants flowin' free, 'N' no giddy, gaudy bedquilts make a ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... year at Hallowe'en, without a bit of warning, The roly-poly pumpkin heads we cut and carved that morning Should grow slim bodies, legs, and feet, And quick, from post and steeple, Come skipping 'mongst us, pert and fleet, Real, frisky pumpkin people! Suppose that you and I had just completed one that minute, As day grew late, down by the gate, and set a candle in it, So that its eyes were deep and wide, Its mouth a grinning yellow, Then turn to find him at our side, A living pumpkin fellow? ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner
... from, or parody of, the solemn ways of the regular romance. There may be even a special reference to the "Phebus" the technical name or nickname of the "high language" in these repeated burlesque introductions of the sun. And the almost pert flings and cabrioles of the narrator form a still more obvious and direct Declaration of Independence. But these are mere details, almost trivial compared with the striking contrast of the whole presentation and faire of the piece, when ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... be more unlike our friend Edward than the stranger. Fair, freckled, light-haired, light-eyed, with invisible eye-brows and eye-lashes, insignificant in feature, pert and perking in expression, and in figure so dwarfed and stunted, that though in point of age he had evidently attained his full growth, (if one may use the expression to such a he-doll,) Robert at fifteen would have made two of him,—such was the new favourite. So far as appearance went, for ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... it may be, but still—properly. Directly it grew familiar, he became careless; and he had a most wilful habit of aggravating his customers, which could not, of course, continue without seriously injuring his trade. For instance, when some pert young puppy would come forward, and civilly enough request his "one or two penn'orth of natives," Bruin would first insist on having the money paid down, and would then tantalise his customer by offering him the opened oyster and hastily withdrawing ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... voice, like a judge's, and a quick, pert eye, like a jackdaw's. Outwardly he was as unlike Margaret as the haft of a pike is unlike a lily, but I already saw ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... right pert," he admitted; "pearter'n I've felt afore in years. You see, she was a good wife. She was a good-lookin' woman, an' smart as they make 'em, an' a fine housekeeper, an' she always done her duty by me an' the children, ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... the two were together at Forbes-Robertson's and a pert flash fell from the artist's lips. "I wish ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... writing his theme, and what in plain English the theme was? The school-boy's smart answer rather surprised her Ladyship—'What is that to you?' She replied—'How can you be so rude? I asked you very civilly a plain question, and did not expect from a school-boy such a pert answer.' The reply was, 'Indeed, my Lady, I can only answer once more, 'What is that to you?' In reality the theme was—Quid ad te pertinet!"—From Holliday's Life of the Earl ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... you never cease meriting your old nick-name? You have springed your dottrel, I find, and what is the consequence?—why, that there will be hue and cry after you presently. The bearer is a pert young lawyer, who has brought a formal complaint against you, which, luckily, he has preferred in a friendly court. Yet, favourable as the judge was disposed to be, it was with the utmost difficulty that cousin Jenny and I could keep him to his tackle. ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... the massive portico of Wilkins's, a chamberlain in white gloves bravely soiled the gloves by seizing the vile brass handle of its door. He bowed to Edward Henry and assisted him to alight on to a crimson carpet. The driver of the taxi glanced with pert and candid scorn at the chamberlain, but Edward Henry looked demurely aside, and then in abstraction mounted the ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... will certainly run great risk of disappearing, in the embrace of a fashion unchastened by common sense; and it is observable that the sensitive gaucherie of a countryman is more agreeable than the pert ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... before I can hope to interest readers in the perplexed details of the life of a not unworthy lady, I must do more than remind them that they do know, or might have known, or should have known the antecedents of my personages. I must let them understand how it came to pass that so pretty, so pert, so gay, so good a girl as Mary Lovelace, without any great fault on her part, married a man so grim, so gaunt, so sombre, and so old as Lord George Germain. It will not suffice to say that she had done ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... had adopted the father's name—was attractive in a decided French way, with crisp black hair, a pert nose and dimple, and, why, good heavens, twenty-one or two years old if she was a week! How time did run. It was nothing extraordinary if Gerrit had been seen a time or two with her on the street, or even if he had called at the Dunsacks'. Barzil's ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... with Chook's mother had been like a long honeymoon, and Pinkey had led the life of a lady, with nothing to do but scrub and wash and help Chook's mother keep her house like a new pin. So she had grown plump and pert like a well-fed sparrow, but the care and worry of the new shop had sharpened the angles of her body. Not that Pinkey cared. She had the instinct for property, the passionate desire to call something her own, an instinct that lay dormant and undeveloped ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... tranquil, assured her that if it would yield her any satisfaction, she should have her choice of an attendant amongst all the girls in his mill. Only he feared they would scarcely suit her, as they were most of them, he was informed, completely ignorant of household work; and pert and self-willed as Sarah was, she was, perhaps, no worse than the majority of the women of ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... congregation, wholly inattentive to the service which was going on, and devoted to the one object of having my blood. The fleas of all nations were there. The smug, steady, importunate flea from Holywell Street; the pert, jumping puce from hungry France, the wary, watchful pulce with his poisoned stiletto; the vengeful pulga of Castile with his ugly knife; the German floh with his knife and fork, insatiate, not rising from table; whole swarms from all the Russias, and Asiatic ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... disappointing; for the meadows were beautiful at this season with their summer snow of daisies—not dead-white snow either, for it was broken by patches of yellow buttercups, crow's-foot, lady's-finger, and vetch, and by the crimson clover flowers and the rusty red of sorrel, and the black pert heads of the nib-wort plaintain, whose black upon the white of ox-eye daisies has the rich ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... the rumour. Mrs. Stornaway did so herself, and it had been intimated that it was this excellent lady who had vouched for the truth of the statement in the first instance; but this report having been traced to a pert young relative who detested and derided her, might have had its origin in ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... on April 6, 1773, at Northwater Bridge, parish of Logie Pert, Forfar. The bridge was 'on the great central line of communication from the north of Scotland. The hamlet is right and left of the high road.' Bain's Life of James Mill, p. 1. Boswell and Johnson, on their road to Laurence Kirk, must have passed close to the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... abnormal that any pretty little half-rustic girl should treat him with anything but reverence. If the girl had been shy, and had blushed and trembled before him a little, he could have understood it. Had she been pert he could have understood it. Young women of the rustic order, if only they were a trifle good-looking, had an old-established license to be pert to their male social superiors. But this young woman was not at all disposed to tremble before him, and was ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... with the decree which the Chancellour proponed to him. But this stamp of Mr. Patrick's was so heavy upon his brother's foot, who had ane sair toe which was painful to him, wherefore he looked to him and said, 'Ye were over pert to stampe upon my foot; were you out of the King's presence I would overtake you upon the mouth.' Mr. Patrick, hearing the vain words of his brother, pled on his knees before the King and the Justice, and made ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... perch. A humming-bird we knew him to be at once, though his feathers were so matted and glued down by the rain that he looked not much bigger than a honey-bee, and as different as possible from the smart, pert, airy little character that we had so often seen flirting with the flowers. He was evidently a humming-bird in adversity, and whether he ever would hum again looked to us exceedingly doubtful. Immediately, however, we sent out ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... deliver the rather pert reply which she was preparing, for the door opened, and the ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... to that, I know which is the biggest gawky of us two,' said pert little Nance; 'and, if you must know, I was just waiting for the chance of Miss Betty coming down, seeing Penny might be in one of her tantrums and not tell me a word.' Then, as the front door of the house suddenly opened, ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... being a light-haired, stiff-necked, free and easy sort of footman, with a swaggering air and pert face, had attracted Mr. Weller's special attention at first, but when he began to come out in this way, Sam felt more than ever disposed to cultivate his acquaintance; so he launched himself into the conversation at once, with ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... It was, however, always necessary that the person so signalized should be submissive. Now, Mrs. Carroll, Mr. Grey's sister, had long since shown that she was not submissive enough, nor were the girls, the eldest of whom was a pert, ugly, well-grown minx, now about eighteen years old. The second sister, who was seventeen, was supposed to be a beauty, but which of the two was the more odious in the eyes of their cousin it would be ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... with Moses, he had such grace in his soul, and such communion with God, that though he had yet a body of sin within him, it was a rare thing for him to see his wretchedness (Num 11:14,15); that is, to see it pert, lively, and powerful in him. Indeed God saith, that upon the land of his people shall come up briars and thorns; 'yea, upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city; because the palaces shall be forsaken, the multitude of the city shall be left, the forts and towers shall be for dens for ever, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... more of Newman as a Professor in class, I had arrived at the condition of a pert and very foolish boy of sixteen who had made up his mind to be an artist and failed altogether to take advantage of the splendid opportunities before him. I attended Newman's classes; saw him every day; ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... works out many a little life-story, as did the ingenious Silas Wegg concerning the people who passed his corner or lived in the houses of the neighborhood. Among the more familiar types are college-students cramming for the day's recitation, giggling school-girls, dapper clerks, pert messenger-boys improving the time by reading a blood-and-thunder story-paper in the very smallest of type, business-men, all nerve in the morning, and in the afternoon chatting affably or half asleep, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... to-morrow all Kinder would know, and all Kinder would laugh. 'What! yo whopped Reuben Grieve's nevvy, Jim? Wal, an a good thing, too! A lick now an again ud do him noa harm—a cantankerous yoong rascot—pert an proud, like t' passon's pig, I say.' David could hear the talk to be as though it were actually beside him. It ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Imitate the starry quire, Who, in their nightly watchful spheres, Lead in swift round the months and years. The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove, Now to the moon in wavering morrice move; And on the tawny sands and shelves Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves. By dimpled brook and fountain-brim, The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim, Their merry wakes and pastimes keep: What hath night to do with sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove; Venus now wakes, and wakens Love. Come, ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... young men in general. They are either over-suave and polite, as if they condescended to remember that you are elderly and that it is their duty to make you forget it, or else they are pert and shallow and disgust you with their egotism. But this young man looked sensible and business-like, and I took to him at once, though what connection he could have with this affair ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... knew and name. And now I discern gay diners in a mansion-place, And the guests dropping wit—pert, prim, or choice, And the hostess's tender and laughing face, And the host's bland brow; I cannot help hearing a hollow voice, And I'd fain not ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... connection of energy and smallness in women is a thing which all may verify in their own circles. In daily life, who is the really formidable woman to encounter?—the black-browed, broad-shouldered giantess, with arms almost as big in the girth as a man's? or the pert, smart, trim little female, with no more biceps than a ladybird, and of just about equal strength with a sparrow? Nine times out of ten, the giantess with the heavy shoulders and broad black eyebrows is a timid, feeble-minded, good tempered person, incapable of anything ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... he prates Of matters far beyond their pates. The grave old man he makes a bustle, And his wise sentence in must justle. Up starts th' Apprentice boy and he Says boldly so and so't must be. The dealer in old shoes to utter His saying too makes no small sputter. Then comes the pert mechanick blade, And contradicts what ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... I-talyan an' English. An' if I ever meets a lady with long soft hands like his'n, I'm for a pert talk, straightway." ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... means to make the latter forget that little unpleasant passage of words which had happened between them. "Do you remember the last time we met at Miss Crawley's, when I was so rude to you, dear Captain Osborne? I thought you seemed careless about dear Amelia. It was that made me angry: and so pert: and so unkind: and so ungrateful. Do forgive me!" Rebecca said, and she held out her hand with so frank and winning a grace, that Osborne could not but take it. By humbly and frankly acknowledging yourself ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... advancing on one of these journeys, if any strange suspicious sights are seen, my lord whale keeps a wary eye on his interesting family. Should any unwarrantably pert young Leviathan coming that way, presume to draw confidentially close to one of the ladies, with what prodigious fury the Bashaw assails him, and chases him away! High times, indeed, if unprincipled young rakes like him are to be permitted ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Alexandrina looked at her as though not fully aware whether she intended to be pert. In truth, the Lady Alexandrina was rather in the dark on the subject. It was almost impossible, it was incredible, that a fatherless, motherless, doctor's niece should be pert to an earl's daughter ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... domestic, with pert familiarity, and took her time in arranging the shade of the lamp. When she returned from the door it was to announce, smilingly, that Mr. Cobb wished to ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... know. Nobody particular, I should think. Wasn't it a pity they didn't have Lady Langham for the Faerie Queen? I do call it absurd the way Sir Cyril Meres has put that pert, insignificant cousin of his forward in quite half the pictures—and when he might have had ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... her diatribe concerning the lively Judith: "Surely you remember her, Jeff. She used to come here selling blackberries when she was a kid—a little barefooted girl and as pert as you please even then. After old Dick Buck died she used to trap rabbits and bring them here for sale and sometimes fish. It always made me mad for Aunt Em'ly to encourage her by making Mother buy the things. I think poor persons should be taken care of all right ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... wild region of the park, to which a distant gate gives entrance. On descending into this unfrequented road, I was surprised to see a carriage standing there. A thin, sly postilion, with that pert, turned-up nose which the old caricaturist Woodward used to attribute to the gentlemen of Tewkesbury, was leaning on his horses, and looked hard at me as I passed. A lady who sat within looked out, with an extra-fashionable bonnet on, and also treated us ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... arts, and especially for the belles-lettres, he entertained a profound contempt. With this he had been inspired by Casimir Perier, whose pert little query "A quoi un poete est il bon?" he was in the habit of quoting, with a very droll pronunciation, as the ne plus ultra of logical wit. Thus my own inkling for the Muses had excited his entire displeasure. He assured me one day, when ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the closet and yanked out his ineffectual city raincoat and rubbers, and the dreary wreck of what had once been his pert new ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... yesterday, with what design cannot be conjectured, though as she may intend to the enemy and pass your way I trouble you with the description: her name is Charlotte but in all probability will change it, yet may be discovered by question. She is light complected, about thirteen years of age, pert, dressed in brown cloth wescoat and petticoat. Your falling upon some method of recovering her should she be near you will accommodate Mrs. Washington and lay her under great obligations to you being the only female servant she brought from home and ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... I know. It's a mighty pert piece of work. I've a mind it's some slick white fellar, with Injuns ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... to admire a mistress that loved him for himself alone? I have for some years sought for a woman, who a stranger to my fortune could think that I had merit as a man. After having tried in vain, even amongst the pert and the ugly, how great at last must be my rapture to have made a conquest over such sense and such heavenly beauty.' Then turning to Jenkinson, 'As I cannot, Sir, part with this young lady myself, for she has taken a fancy to the cut of my ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... cruelly and unjustly attacked Mr. Smart the poet." What innocent soul could have imagined that The Impertinent and The Inspector were the same individual? The style is a specimen of persiflage; the thin sparkling thought; the pert vivacity, that looks like wit without wit; the glittering bubble, that rises in emptiness;—even its author tells us, in The Inspector, it is "the most pert, the most ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... no news for me from Unterwald? What of my father? 'Tis not to be borne, Thus to be pent up like a felon here! What have I done so heinous that I must Skulk here in hiding, like a murderer? I only laid my staff across the fists Of the pert varlet, when before my eyes, By order of the governor, he tried To drive away my ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... and pert, And thinks himself wondrously wise; But I-know, the second, steps in all so curt, And you'd think that each ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... Rufe always met at the tanyard, and which served to make him so pert and forward, the tanner said, humoring the privileged character, "What be you-uns a-talkin' 'bout, boy? Mrs. Price ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... of words, the schoolboy's vain parade, Of books and cases—all his stock in trade— The pert conceits, the cunning tricks and play Of low attorneys, strung in long array, The unseemly jest, the petulant reply, That chatters on, and cares not how, or why, Strictly avoid—unworthy themes to scan, They ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... house, within about four acres of garden, surrounded by a very high, red-brick wall. It is one of those houses of which there used to be scores within the immediate neighbourhood of London—of which there still are dozens, although, alas! they are yearly disappearing to make room for gay rows of pert, upstart villas, whose tawdry flashiness ill replaces the sedate respectability of their last-century predecessors. But, uncoveted by the contractor's lawless eye, untouched by the builder's desecrating hand, Walpole Lodge stands on, as it did a hundred years ago, hidden ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... forgotten it again?" No answer, but a hiding of the head under her arm like a duck, which often takes place when she is in fault. "Then, Rose, put the coffee on, sweep the parlor, and go home for it." This elicited, "me no gwine home," a pert rejoinder I could not understand, till on calling her to me I saw by her face how excessively green I had been. I reprimanded her with a sober face as she again repeated "me no gwine home," at the same time ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... refilling the prescription on which he was working, and went out to see if he were needed in front. He sold a lip-stick to a pert miss who from sheer instinct made eyes at him, and he wished that Helen May had such plump cheeks—though he thanked God she had not the girl's sophisticated eyes. (Yes, a bungalow out there against the hills ought to do a lot for Helen May.) He glanced up ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... certain ones of those who were staying at Cranston's, with whom I had danced, to whom I had made pretty speeches, and had given the bell button that was sewn just over my heart. She certainly was not the best of them, for I can see now that she was vain and shallow, with a pert boldness, which I mistook for vivacity and wit. Three years ago, at the age of twenty, my knowledge of women was so complete that I divided them into six classes, and as soon as I met a new one I placed her in one of these classes and created her according to the line of campaign I had ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... all call each other by short names and nicknames and all kinds of absurd names. Anna is generally Nan, and the boys are Pert and Quick—at least those are the names that have lasted longest. I daresay it's partly because they are just a little like their real names—Percival ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... the instant it becomes disobedient. It soon learns that it can not "stay with mother" unless it is well-behaved. This means that it learns self-control in babyhood. Not only must children obey, but they must never be allowed to "show off" or become pert, or to contradict or to answer back; and after having been told "no," they must never be allowed by ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... explained away,—who is there that has not seen these low arts and base appliances put into practice, and becoming general, until success cannot be surely had by any more honorable means?—the result being a State ruled and ruined by ignorant and shallow mediocrity, pert self-conceit, the greenness of unripe intellect, vain of ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... do with it, Nora; and your tone, my dear, without meaning it, of course, was just a shade pert just now. It is essential in the present day that all well-educated women should be able to speak at least in ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... Venus of thirty-six, of middle height, and with the voluptuous figure of a true Viennese, with bright eyes, thick dark hair, and beautiful white teeth, while her daughter Ida, who was seventeen, had light hair and the pert little nose of the china figures of shepherdesses in the dress of the period of Louis XIV., and was short, slim, and full of French grace. Besides them and the Count, a son of twelve and his tutor were present at supper. It struck the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... scarce, his mirthful meed Had won, ere Tibbald of Stow,— With look as pert as the pouncing glede When he eyeth the chick below,— Scraped his crowd, And clear and loud, As the merle-cock shrill, Or the bell from the hill, Thus tuned his throat to his rough sire's praise— His sire ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... time-honoured old age. There is in their wisdom a perfume of the past, homely and ancient-fashioned like a whiff of pot pourri, wondrous soothing withal to olfactories agitated by the patchoulis and jockey clubs of modern pretenders and petit- maitres, with their grey young heads and pert intelligence, the motto of whose ignorance is "Connu!" Were a dose of its antique, mature experience adhibited to the Western before he visits the East, those few who could digest it might escape the normal lot of being twisted round the fingers of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Miss Green was invariably accompanied by Mr. Charles Larkyns; secondly, that the Rev. Josiah Meek kept Miss Helen dallying about the wine and lemonade tray much longer than was necessary for the mere consumption of the cooling liquids; and thirdly, that Miss Fanny, who was a pert, talkative Miss of sixteen, was continually to be found there with either Mr. Henry Bouncer or Mr. Alfred Brindle dancing attendance upon her. But, be this as it may, the intelligent Mr. Mole was impressed with the conviction that ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... "The pert little mess is spoilt enough as it is, Heaven knows. And if things came to the pass that I had to stand up whenever Sancha came into the room, and to sit on a footstool while she lolled back in a chair the way Meregrett does, it would ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... doubtless, very beautiful. You must all have admired the bold, fierce, bright eye of the eagle; the large, gentle, brown eye of the ox; the treacherous, green eye of the cat, waxing and waning like the moon; the pert eye of the sparrow; the sly eye of the fox; the peering little bead of black enamel in the mouse's head; the gem-like eye that redeems the toad from ugliness, and the intelligent, affectionate expression which looks out of the human-like eye of the horse and dog. There ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... of the shadowy Campaspe. At times however Lyly can dispense with such adventitious aids. Pipenetta, the fascinating little wench in Midas and one of our dramatist's most successful creations, needs no other illumination than her own pert speeches. Diogenes again is an effective piece of work. But both these are minor characters who therefore receive no development, and if we look at the more important personages of Lyly's portrait gallery, we must agree with Mr Bond[131] that Tellus is the best. She is a character which exhibits ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... settled, I will come and fetch you; and know thou, my Kitty darling, if you do not make your brothers as contented as they in their gracious will shall desire, they will publish throughout the length and breadth of the land the short-comings of their pert little sister; and the decree once gone forth that our Kitty is a useless little baggage, and not fit to be a squatter's wife, what ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... timidly, and in a moment or so a pert girl with a dirty cap on her head came and ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... corner by the shrubbery—the tree which bore the great white Bigareau cherries; and it was quite time they were picked, for some were split right down the side from over-ripeness, while the sparrows had been attacking others, and had committed sad havoc amongst them—the little pert rascals having picked out all the finest and ripest for their operations, and then, after taking a few bites out of the richest and sweetest part, they commenced upon another. As for Harry, who was not at ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... Which check'd his amorous flame with coy repulse, The worst events that mortals can befall; By cares depress'd, in pensive hippish mood, With slowest pace the tedious minutes roll, Thy charming sight, but much more charming gust, New life incites, and warms our chilly blood. Straight with pert looks we raise our drooping fronts, And pour in crystal pure thy purer juice;— With cheerful countenance and steady hand Raise it lip-high, then fix the spacious rim To the expecting mouth:—with grateful taste The ebbing wine glides swiftly o'er the tongue; The circling blood with quicker ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... and dull memories of sleepless nights, and chilly mornings. Nothing to listen to but the twittering of the canary downstairs, and the distant wrangling of children in the nursery: no one to speak to but the harassed housewife, wanted in a dozen places at once, and the pert housemaid, whose noisiness is distracting. The man lay there, cursing his helplessness. In spite of his iron will, the unseen enemy, who had stolen in by night, conquered, holding him down with a hundred tingling fingers when ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... indolent souls of the senators were convulsively roused by this death- struggle; but yet the war as to the constitution terminated in a very different and far more pitiful fashion than it had begun. A youth in every sense noble had commenced the revolution; it was concluded by pert intriguers and demagogues of the lowest type. On the other hand, while the Optimates had begun the struggle with a measured resistance and with a defence which earnestly held out even at the forlorn posts, they ended with taking the initiative in club-law, with ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... all the downright courage of the little woman, had its effect. A roar of sympathetic applause followed the act. "Cut and run while you can," she whispered hurriedly over her one shoulder, without altering the other's attitude of pert and saucy defiance toward the audience. But even as she spoke the poet tottered and sank fainting upon the stage. Then she threw a despairing whisper behind the scenes, "Ring down ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... several times, an Irish girl opened the door, cautiously (as Irish girls always do), and admitted them into the entry, where one light only was burning in a branch lamp. "Shall we go upstairs?" said Mrs. Morland. "And what for would ye go upstairs?" said the girl in a pert tone. "It's all dark there, and there's no preparations. Ye can lave your things here a-hanging on the rack. It is a party ye're expecting? Blessed are them what ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... splendid ball, She never blazed in courtly grandeur, But like her native lily's bloom, She cheerfu' gilds her humble home; The pert reply, the modish air, To soothe the soul were never granted, When modest sense and love are there, The guise o' art may well be wanted; O Fate! gi'e me to be my bride The bonnie ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... sarcasm of this remark, and perhaps its sting was deeper than was meant. The Judge was not an unkind man, though he did not relish the reply to his question; he held up his horses on the margin of the water, and perhaps he wanted to be asked by this pert youth for the favor of a passage over. Of course the petition was not, and never would have been made. He lingered a moment, and without another word entered the river, and, turning his horses' heads ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... Imitate the Starry Quire, Who in their nightly watchfull Sphears, Lead in swift round the Months and Years. The Sounds, and Seas with all their finny drove Now to the Moon in wavering Morrice move, And on the Tawny Sands and Shelves, Trip the pert Fairies and the dapper Elves; By dimpled Brook, and Fountain brim, The Wood-Nymphs deckt with Daisies trim, Their merry wakes and pastimes keep: What hath night to do with sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove, Venus now wakes, and wak'ns Love.... Com, knit hands, and beat the ground, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... a suppressed longing and eager interest, her eyes sparkling, in the midst of all the chattering, whispering and gossiping among her different ideals—Kristofa and Gunda, active Swedish Lena, and pert Jakobina. If she could not be with them herself, she might at any rate hear what fun they had had, and all that had happened. In this way she could live their life ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... till I've done a little chance of business," cried the constable, creeping out from a corner of the barn, where the husked ears had been piled, and planting himself, like a pert exclamation point, before the old man. "I've got to make a levy on this corn heap," he said; "the oxen out yonder, and sundry other goods and chattels about the Old Homestead. I want to do everything fair and above board, so just wait to see ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... to my expectations, the evening proved. There were many people all smart and gaudy, and so pert and low-bred, that I could hardly endure being amongst them; but the party to which, unfortunately, I belonged, seemed ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... unsuspiciously. She had half a mind to reply, "Is that so strange?" But her respect for Harley stopped her. The words would have seemed to her pert. "I am told he is ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... again. It furnished an occupation to fill in the time; it gave Kalvar Dard an excuse for surrounding himself with half a dozen charming girls, and the girls seemed to enjoy being with him. There was tall blonde Olva, the electromagnetician; pert little Varnis, the machinist's helper; Kyna, the surgeon's-aide; dark-haired Analea; Dorita, the accountant; plump little Eldra, the armament technician. At the moment, they were all sitting on or around the desk in the corner of the store-room, going over the inventory when they ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper
... word; to tell the truth she wasn't quite so good-looking as he had imagined, but she didn't please him any the less for that. She might be about eighteen, was brunette, rather short, with very dark, flashing eyes, a tilted, pert nose, a sensual mouth and thick lips. She was, too, a bit full behind and in the breasts and the hips; she was neat, fresh, with a very high top-knot and a pair of ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... we think, Miss Pert. You are suspected, as I said; and, I should infer from your manner, not without good cause. Are you willing that I should search your person for evidence to confirm ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... endeavouring to rive the bole of a knotted oak with his trunk, but the tree closed upon that member, detaining it, and causing the hapless Elphas Africanus intense pain. He shook the forest with his trumpeting, and all the beasts gathered around him. "Ah, ha, my friend," said a pert Chimpanzee, "you have got your trunk checked, I see." "My children," said a temperate Camel to her young, "let this awful example teach you to shun the bole." "Does it hurt much?" said a compassionate Gnu. "Ah, it does; it does; it must; I gnu it; I have been a mother myself." And while ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... most hopeless of all sinners, who practise such an exemplary system of outward duties, that even a deadly crime may be hidden from their own sight and remembrance, under this unreal frostwork. Yet he now finds his place. Why do that pair of flaunting girls, with the pert, affected laugh and the sly leer at the by-standers, intrude themselves into the same rank with yonder decorous matron, and that somewhat prudish maiden? Surely these poor creatures, born to vice as their sole and natural inheritance, can be no fit associates for women who have been guarded ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the leafy tree-tops high." Thus they talked, but soon the teepee grew like summer, strangely warm, And the old man's head dropped listless o'er a soundly-sleeping form. High the sun rode in the heavens, and a bluebird, pert and trim, Called out, "Say-ee, I am thirsty;" and the rivers flowed for him. As the old man slept, the maiden passed her hand above his head, And he smaller grew and smaller, till, all mortal substance sped, But a mass of green leaves growing there remained ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... know and I don't care one bit," said Polly, without meaning to be pert but simply ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... value to his recorded impertinence. If the mind and heart of the country had its due expression, if its life had taken form in a literature worthy of itself, we should pay little regard to the childish tattling of a pert coxcomb who was discontented with our taverns, or the execrations of some bluff sea-captain who was shocked with our manners. The uneasy sense we have of something in our national existence which has not yet been fitly expressed, gives poignancy ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... Scarce list'ning to their idle chat; Further than sometimes by a frown, When they grew pert, to pull them down. At last she spitefully was bent To try their wisdom's full extent; And said, she valued nothing less Than titles, figure, shape, and dress; That merit should be chiefly placed In judgment, knowledge, wit, and taste; And these, she offered to dispute, Alone distinguished ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... whose saucy eye and pert figure might lead any honest mariner into contraband, or even into a sea-robbery!" half-whispered Trysail, perhaps afraid to trust his voice within hearing of a creature that seemed almost endowed with the faculties of life. "Ay, this is the hussy! I know her by the book, and her green ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... sniffed the mingled smell of smoke and stockyards and found it sweet in her nostrils. An unholy joy seized her. She entered the Biggest Store and made for the millinery department, yielding to an uncontrollable desire to buy a hat. It was a pert, trim, smart little hat. It made her thirty-six years seem less possible than ever, and her ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... water-bag. They both hoped to pull wool off dead sheep and make some more money that way. They had quite made up their minds about what they wanted to get: it must be house plants for ma; but still they both wished they could get some little thing for pa. They were not pert or forward in any way, but they answered readily and we all drew them out, even ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... strange career; The tiros love it, but the experts fear. You, while you're sailing on a prosperous tack, Look out for squalls which yet may drive you back. The gay dislike the grave, the staid the pert, The quick the slow, the lazy the alert; Hard drinkers hate the sober, though he swear Those bouts at night are more than he can bear. Unknit your brow; the silent man is sure To pass for ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... little pert Egyptian knocker, with a long thin face, a pinched-up nose, and a very sharp chin; he is most in vogue with your government-office people, in light drabs and starched cravats; little spare, priggish ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... was very pert with you all day,—and I don't think I'm pert naturally,—taking you up about the landscape, and twitting you about the Saguenay scenery and legends, you know. But I thought you were trying to put me down,—you are rather ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... two here?" Mona could be very pert when she tried. "Jack and I are holding down the ranch just now; the boys are all on roundup, of course. Jack went to town today to ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... morning two horsemen dashed down the Linden. Their loud conversation, their pert and noisy laughter, aroused the curiosity of the porters who stood yawning in the house-doors, and the maids opened the windows and gazed curiously at the two gallant French officers who were taking such an early ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... and heard and gossiped of them? Our own Vicar had spoken to me of Nell, and would not speak too harshly, for Nell was Protestant. Yes, Nell, so please you, was Protestant. And other grave divines forgave her half her sins because she flouted most openly and with pert wit the other lady, who was suspected of an inclination towards Rome and an intention to charm the King into the true Church's bosom. I also could have forgiven her much; for, saving my good Darrell's presence, I hated a Papist worse than any man, saving a Ranter. Yes, I would ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... read Euclid and Laplace,—your opinion has some value; if you do not know these, you are not entitled to give any opinion on the subject. Whenever any skeptic or bigot claims to be heard on the questions of intellect and morals, we ask if he is familiar with the books of Plato, where all his pert objections have once for all been disposed of. If not, he has no right to our time. Let him go and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... "Pert, but smart, Saxe," he said. "Seriously, though, a mountain climber, who must naturally be often walking along risky places, has enough to think about without indulging in fancies of what might be if this happened or that took place. Such thoughts may unnerve ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... is not a more startling witness to the character of its surroundings than the "terrible infant," whose rude snatchings, pert contradictions, and glib slang phrases are sure to be most effectively "shown off" in the presence of visitors. It is of little use to affect grieved surprise, or stern reprobation, when one's children are merely exhibiting ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... A putty consid'able pert o' it air made up o' Mormings; an' they'll be boun' to the Salt Lake. We kin foller them an' drop t'other. In the Morming settlements, we kin swop our unyforms for suthin' else, an' the berra too. Es to the knepsacks an' cartridge-box, I guess as how I inteend to ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... fully shared their sentiments. A taste for music, for example, generally suggests to him a parson fiddling when he ought to be praying; and following once more the lead of Newton, he remarks upon the Handel celebration as a piece of grotesque profanity. The name of science calls up to him a pert geologist, declaring after an ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Abram may have been conjured—Peter Simple says, a' never look'd up, after a' sent to the wise woman—Marry, a' was always given to look down afore his elders; a' might do it, a' was given to it—your Worship knows it; but then 'twas peak and pert with him—a' was a man again, marry, in the turn of his heel.—A' died, your Worship, just about one, at the crow of the cock.—I thought how it was with him; for a' talk'd as quick, aye, marry, as glib as your Worship; and a' smiled, and look'd at his own nose, and call'd ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... said Jucundus; "a pert, forward imp. 'Twas Gete against Briton. Much good comes of schooling! He's a wicked one already. Ah, the new generation! I don't know where ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... proclaim the task commenc'd. Upon his throne with magisterial brow The teacher sits, round casting frowning looks As the low giggle and the shuffling foot Betray the covert jest, or idleness. Oft does he call with deep and pompous voice, The class before him, and shrill chattering tones In pert or blundering answers, break the soft And dreamy hum of study, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... tongue knew no control, With golden wing and satin poll, A last year's bird who ne'er had tried What marriage means, thus pert replied: "Methinks the gentleman," quoth she, "Opposite in the appletree, By his good will would keep us single, Until yonder heavens and earth shall mingle, Or (which is likelier to befall) Until death exterminate ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... his art T' ensnare the unsuspecting heart. The prostitute, with faithless smiles, Remorseless plays her tricks and wiles. Her gesture bold and ogling eye, Obtrusive speech and pert reply, And brazen front and stubborn tone, Show all her native virtue's flown. By her the thoughtless youth is ta'en, Impoverished, disgraced, or slain: Through her the marriage vows are broke, And Hymen proves a ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... the room, feeling as if the raven of his dream already had its beak in his heart, when a pert official reached out his hand with the demand, "Consultation fee, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... only for a few days," Morgan replied, smiling a little at the pert sufficiency of ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... friends; but young people especially are susceptible to the influence of example. And it is a painful but well known fact that young people are much more easily and quickly influenced by bad example than by good. One frivolous, vain, forward, pert young girl, coming for a season into association with a company of young people, may in a few short weeks make her impress on the manners and conversation of the whole of them. Her slang expressions will be adopted; her loud manners and eccentricities ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... able to pay for their wine with the mirth which it qualifies them to produce. Full of this opinion, they crowd with little invitation, wherever the smell of a feast allures them, but are seldom encouraged to repeat their visits, being dreaded by the pert as rivals, and hated by the dull ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... with the rhythm of it. "My word!" said Miss Bruce-Drummond. She listened fascinatedly to their deafening repertoire. Greenmount's supporters, a rather forlorn little group of substitutes, with the coach and trainer and a teacher or two, and a pert fox terrier wearing their colors on his collar, elicitated a brief, passing pity from Honor. They looked strange and friendless, these smart Northern prep-schoolers. The L. A. rooters conscientiously gave their opponents' yell and received a ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... and handsome, her eyebrows lifted up; Her chin is very neat and pert, and smooth like a china cup; Her hair's the brag of Ireland, so weighty and so fine, It's rolling down upon her neck and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dullness of communication, compared with the simple altar-like structure and silent heart-language of the old dial! It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... but warmed the blood like drafts of wine. The men were up in the woods, and the shrill scream of the bluejay flashing across the open, the impudent chatter of the red squirrel from the top of the grub camp, and the pert chirp of the whisky-jack, hopping about on the rubbish-heap, with the long, lone cry of the wolf far down the valley, only made the silence felt ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... for his philosophical attainments. I can almost see this enthusiastic youth scandalizing and shocking his mother and her friends by his bold advocacy of doctrines at war with the gospel, but which he supposed to be very philosophical. Pert and bright young men in these times often talk as he did, but do not know enough to see ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... knees, crossed them the other way, shifted his quid of tobacco to the opposite cheek, and pulled down the brim of the wide hat till it touched his leathery nose. "Such a slim, little figger!" he added. "Such a pert, little haid! And—and a cute face! And ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... contemporary reader who was certainly not an admirer; and upon whom W.H.'s cockneyisms, Gallicisms, egotisms, and "ille-isms" generally, seem to have had the effect of a red rag upon an inveterately insular bull. "A very ingenious but pert, dogmatical, and Prejudiced Writer" is his uncomplimentary addition to the author's name. Then here is Cunningham's Goldsmith of 1854, vol. i., castigated with equal energy by that Alaric Alexander Watts,[2] of whose egregious strictures upon Wordsworth we read not long since in the ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... kit?" burst out the third member of the party indignantly—a sprightly youth with a very short tunic and a pert expression. "Do they want you to return your small kit when you get the mitten? Watch me returnin' mine, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... ourselves behind a slab of granite, and ate the luncheon we had brought, cold venison steak and bread. By and by a marvelous thing happened. A flash of wings sparkled in the air, a brave little voice challenged us cheerily, a pert tiny rock-wren flirted his tail and darted his wings and wanted to know what we were thinking of anyway to enter his especial territory. And shortly from nowhere appeared two Canada Jays, silent as the wind itself, hoping for ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... before I close the scene, The sacred altar should be clean. Oh, had I Shadwell's second bays, Or, Tate! thy pert and humble lays,— Ye pair, forgive me, when I vow I never missed your works till now,— I'd tear the leaves to wipe the shrine, That only way you please the Nine; But since I chance to want these two, I'll make ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... the street but wide side yards separated it from its newer neighbors. It was pretentiously ugly with its mansard roof, intricate porches, balconies and bay windows that had evidently been added after the original architectural atrocity had been committed. At her first glance as the pert and frilly maid opened the door it seemed as though the whole house were filled with innumerable elaborate draperies and fat-framed paintings and much stuffed furniture. While she waited for the maid to announce her, her quick ears caught the nervous undertone of the house—the whining voices ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... Miss Patty, I saw it all from the beginning, and shall now punish you for forwardness and pert little saying, which only made him worse than he would have been. You know what he said was quite true, you are as bad as the animal there, which knows no better, whilst you could have run away and saved yourself if you ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... doesn't know. I shudder to think what would happen if Carrie should get miffed and begin to divulge. Once we had a telephone girl who did this. She was a pert young thing who had come to town with her family a short time before. It was a mistake to hire her—telephone girls should be watched and tested for discretion from babyhood up—but our directors did it, and because she showed a passion for literature and ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... all the care That waits upon a favourite heir, Ne'er felt correction's rigid hand; Indulged to disobey command, In pampered ease his hours were spent; He never knew what learning meant. Such forward airs, so pert, so smart, Were sure to win his lady's heart; Each little mischief gained him praise; How pretty were his fawning ways! 10 The wind was south, the morning fair, He ventured forth to take the air. He ranges all the meadow round, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... in all her rambles by a diminutive nondescript kind of dog—a tiny, long-haired, silky looking creature, the colour of coffee freshly ground, no bigger than a large squirrel, with brilliant black eyes, bushy tail, and a pert little face, ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... however, he arrived safe in the outer shop, where the books of the firm were exposed to sight, in process of being subscribed for by the trade. There a pert young man asked him to take a seat, while he carried his name to the publisher, and there for some time he waited, reading titles he found himself unable to lay hold of; and there, while he waited, the threatened rain began, and, ere he was ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... Redding as unpleasant as the inside one. Dull streets, small houses everywhere; no gardens, except now and then a single bed, edged with a row of stiff cockle-shells by way of fence, and planted with pert sweet-williams or crown imperials. These Mary thought were worse than no flowers at all. Every thing smelt of fish. The very sea was made ugly by warehouses and shabby wharves. The people they met were strangers; and, altogether, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... return to the palace amazement reigned throughout the Court at such a sudden and extraordinary change. Whereas formerly they had been accustomed to hear her give vent to silly, pert remarks, they now heard her express herself ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... had a fair idea of their mutual dependence upon each other. Not that he placed the slightest value on Waitstill's opinion of him, or cared in the smallest degree what she, or any one else in the universe, thought of his conduct; but she certainly did appear to advantage when contrasted with the pert little hussy who had just left the premises. Also, Waitstill loomed large in his household comforts and economies, having a clear head, a sure hand, and being one of the steady-going, reliable sort that can be counted on in emergencies, not, like Patty, going ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
Copyright © 2026 Free-Translator.com
|
|
|
