"Chattering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this in Heaven's name? We had been quite still, resting while this talk was going on, but we could hear the hawks chattering from the rocks, we were so ...
— The Hollow Land • William Morris
... settlement was eminently suggestive of peace. The cattle lay sleepily in the shade of the trees; the sea was still calm like glass. Men had ceased from their daily toil; and the only sounds that broke the quiet of the morning were the chattering of the parrots and other birds in the cocoanut groves; and the cries of seafowl, as they circled in the air, or dropt on the surface of the sea ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... our heads, came a chittering and a chattering such as I had never heard. The big man before us dropped to the earth, his head bowed, muttering. As for me, my fright increased. The chattering stopped, and Nick stepped forward and laid his hand on the negro's ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was searching for the tracks of a Lion. He asked a man felling oaks in the forest if he had seen any marks of his footsteps or knew where his lair was. "I will," said the man, "at once show you the Lion himself." The Hunter, turning very pale and chattering with his teeth from fear, replied, "No, thank you. I did not ask that; it is his track only I am in search of, not the ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... Clive to you? Was you invited to the regale? You was one of that stinking crowd, I suppose, that bawled in the street. You go and herd with knaves and yokels, do you? and bring shame upon me, and set the countryside a-chattering of Richard Burke and his idle young oaf of a brother! By gad, sir, I'll whip you for this; I'll give you something to remember ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... music was over, a certain Aurelio Ascolano, [6]remarkable for his gift as an improvisatory poet, began to extol the women in choice phrases of exquisite compliment. While he was chanting, the two girls who had my beauty between them never left off chattering. One of them related how she had gone wrong; the other asked mine how it had happened with her, and who were her friends, and how long she had been settled in Rome, and many other questions of the kind. It is true that, if I chose to describe ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... now in jetted black, the lowest cut gown in the room, her yellow hair fluffing and flaring into an unbelievable number of well-filled-out puffs, was chattering to the Colonel in a low voice, so that Judith could not understand, and breaking into French at intervals—Green River High School French, but she spoke it with an air, narrowing her blue-gray eyes after an alluring fashion she had and laughing her full-toned laugh. She was a full-blown, ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... a pine cone at a jovial squirrel, and he ran with chattering fear. High in a treetop he stopped, and, poking his head cautiously from behind a branch, looked down with an air ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... shot, perhaps, in the act of flying over the hunter's head, as these birds are now often seen and heard going north. In the evening I see from my window the neighboring Eskimo children playing with their sleds, and sometimes they light a bonfire, shouting and chattering in their own unique way. All "mushers" now travel at night when the trail is frozen, as it is too soft in the daytime, and the glare of the sun often causes snow-blindness. Then, too, there is water on the ice in places, which we are glad to see, and pools of the same are standing around the Mission ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... wore a shawl, gipsy fashion, over her head, and reaching to her feet, which were shod in unusually large and heavy hob-nailed boots. The faces and hands of both were black with dirt, and bronzed with heat, and as they stood there trembling in the grasp of the law, with chattering teeth and tottering knees, they looked a veritable ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... for several days, but this night, whilst one of the party was keeping watch, a short distance from the fire, about eleven o'clock, he heard the chattering of the blacks. Three spears were almost immediately thrown into the camp and fell near the fire, but fortunately without injuring any of the party. We fired a few shots in the direction from which the spears came; the night ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... shaking of a gourd filled with dry seeds, which is called ghiera, and whose "chick-a-chick, chick-chick" takes the place of the more poetical castanets;—here you find one or more couples exhibiting their skill in Cuban dances, with a great deal of applause and chattering from the crowd around. Beside those of the populace, many aristocratic groups parade the Plaza, in full dress, crowned with flowers and jewels;—a more motley scene can hardly be imagined. Looking up, one sees in curious contrast the tall palms with which the Plaza ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... they walk up and down together). Yes, of course! I had altogether forgotten how much you have to bear just now; I have been chattering away—. Oh, I don't know how I could feel so happy, because I am really dreadfully distressed. But, you know, I sit the whole play beside grandfather, thinking, without even being able to talk. I generally read aloud to him; now and then he makes a remark, but ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... it is a whole village, with a church and castle and piazza, some few feet square, huddled together on a narrow platform. We met one day three magnates of Gorbio taking a morning stroll backwards and forwards, up and down their tiny square. Vehemently gesticulating, loudly chattering, they talked as though they had not seen each other for ten years, and were but just unloading their budgets of accumulated news. Yet these three men probably had lived, eaten, drunk, and talked together from the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... The monkey would clamber down over the end of the tent as if he were about to allow himself to be made a prisoner, and then, just as Toby was about to catch the rope, he would spring upon the ridge-pole again, chattering with joy at ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... of the cabin, and even the beauties of the glorious city scarce affected me. We lay opposite the Doria palace, and the constellation of villas and towers still glittered along the hills; but who, with his teeth chattering and limbs numb and damp, could feel pleasure in looking ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... half in love, and making soft speeches within sight of the hill whereon Christ died, nor that he took a boy's mischievous pleasure in interrupting the King's droning litany, recited in verse and response with the priest at his side; nor that some of the knights were chattering of what lodging they should find, and the young squires, in undertones, of black-eyed Jewish girls, and the grooms of Syrian wine. They were as nothing, all these, as nothing but the shadows of the world ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... an interminable wait; but he did not want to chance running into Holworthy in the lobby and he told himself it would be rude to abandon Sister Anne. But he now was not so conscious of the imaginary Sister Anne as of the actual box party on his near right, who were laughing and chattering volubly. He wondered whether they laughed at him—whether Miss Flagg were again entertaining them at his expense; again making his advances appear ridiculous. He was so sure of it that he flushed indignantly. He was glad he ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... more they needed. It was when this thought came to her that she clutched her hands in her hair. The pretty and smart women and agreeable more or less good looking men who had chattered and laughed and made love in her drawing-rooms were chattering, laughing and making love in other houses at this very moment—or they were at the theatre applauding some fashionable actor-manager. At this very moment—while she lay on the carpet in the dark and every little room in the house ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... chattered and twittered on a neighbouring bough, as if he enjoyed and approved of all the severe things the raven uttered. The little tomtit was the worst of the two, just as the solemn reproof of the wise can be better borne than the impertinent remark of some chattering fool. To these imaginary evils was added the reality of some enormous water-rats that issued from an adjacent pool and began to eat Andy's hat and shoes, which had fallen off in his struggle with his captors; and all Andy's ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... we'll take you straight to Willow Lake," he said, lifting the unfortunate man, who already had almost lost the use of his limbs, and who answered with his teeth chattering: ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... knees out of the tunnel mouths like dark hairy monsters issuing from their holes. They had spears and knives of ivory with them; but a glance showed the two parties that they were friends, and in a few moments Awatok and his comrades were chattering vociferously round the sailors, and endeavouring by word and sign to make ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... birth, Come, come, come! Oh, ye who shake hills with the scream of your mirth, When cities sink howling in ruin; and ye Who with wingless footsteps trample the sea, 500 And close upon Shipwreck and Famine's track, Sit chattering with joy on the foodless wreck; Come, come, come! Leave the bed, low, cold, and red, Strewed beneath a nation dead; 505 Leave the hatred, as in ashes Fire is left for future burning: It will burst in bloodier flashes When ye stir it, soon returning: Leave ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... been careful to buy a young one that could not speak, for he knew the Morris boys would not want one chattering foreign gibberish, nor yet one that would swear. He had kept her in his bunk in the ship, and had spent all his leisure time in teaching her to talk. Then he looked at her anxiously, and said, "Show ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... be safe with you. You see, Giles looks upon you in the character of nurse, Miss Garston, and forgets you are young too. "Depend upon it, they have forgotten the time," I said to him: "when two girls are chattering their secrets to each other, they are not likely to remember anything so sublunary." You should have seen Giles's expression of lordly disgust when I ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... chattering, her lips remaining parted; she shook the hair out of her eyes and stared at him as if she did not understand, but Joe Louden, who had picked up the banjo-case ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... one gush of chattering information. The captain had been sent for by the Herr General Stultz. He had already been away three days. It was whispered he ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... had gamboled past, all snickering, of course, at his predicament. In this state of utter misery he arrived at last at the field, where, to his amazement, quite a group of Fifth-Formers came up and surrounded Miss McCarty, chattering in the most bewildering manner. Dink seized the opportunity to drop back, draw a long sigh, reach madly behind for his necktie, which had climbed perilously near the edge of his collar, and shoot back his cuffs. He saw the Tennessee Shad ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... guided us; and we should never have found the spot without him. He led us to a stream, crossed by a single plank with a handrail, on which some children had put a trap, baited with nuts for the poor squirrels, that love to run chattering across the rail from wood to wood. Then we entered a little covert; it was very pleasant in there, all dark and green and still; and here all at once we came to the place; in the covert were half a dozen little steep pits, ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... before the party returned to the yacht, chattering and admiring the natural riches displayed on all sides, for even close to the streets of the capital, fields of wheat and maize were waving, and crops of vegetables, imported forty years before; and in the environs of the village, herds of cattle ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... was shallow and there was no difficulty in getting out, but the girls now were as wet as before, and shivering more than ever. At this juncture the guardian took a hand. She directed them to walk up and down the road in orderly fashion, which they did, shivering, their teeth chattering and the water dripping from their clothing. Reaching the main highway the guardian turned out on this, walking her charges a full mile in the direction they had been following before turning off ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... autumn coloring in the trees the racket begins. You may not have seen a blue jay in the woods for months. Suddenly they appear in flocks, swooping down on the orchard in brand new uniforms of conspicuous blue, white and black, yelling tooting and chattering. They have been shy and careful. They are now tame and reckless. They troop into the pasture after the wild cherries which they eat with chattering and scolding. On vibrant limbs they give spirit rappings in imitation of a woodpecker. ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... nights in May, when the moon soars high in the sky, and all the woods and fields are clothed in the green of spring. But the stillness of the night frightened Molly, and when she stopped to pick up her dress she heard the ducks chattering in the reeds. The world seemed divided into darkness and light. The hawthorn-trees threw black shadows that reached into the hollows, and Molly did not dare to go by the path that led through a little wood, lest she should ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... gone for ever. Some were very richly carved, but Nature's tracery was rapidly blotting out the handiwork of man, the twining convolvulus usurping the glories of the patient chisel. Still up we climbed, where hosts of chattering monkeys swung from branch to branch, or poised screaming overhead, or a frightened serpent rose with hissing mouth, and then glided in a flash back through the undergrowth. One, that seemed to me of ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... me," said his new acquaintance, "if I shut these shutters and the window, for that devilish fever of which I spoke is of such a sort that I must keep the night air even out from my room, or else I shall be shaking the bones out of my joints and chattering the teeth out of my head ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... at the end of the story. As they journeyed in the sun across the endless flats—for the mountains had vanished now, and nothing broke the level of the sand—mademoiselle's gaiety went from her. Silent was the lively, chattering tongue that knew the jargon of cities, the gossip of the Plage. She was oppressed. Tahar rode close at her side. He seemed to have taken her under his special protection. Far before them rode the attendants, chanting deep love songs in the sun. The sound of those ...
— The Figure In The Mirage - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... in at the open door, halted at the sound of Tahn-te's voice—and then flung himself forward. It was Ka-yemo and his teeth were chattering at the thought ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... her, chattering threateningly the while they goaded her with their cudgels and beat and kicked her with their fists and feet, she lay with closed eyes, praying for the merciful death that she knew alone could give her surcease from ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... within himself, "It was a dream!" But the straw rustled as he turned his head, There were the cap and bells beside his bed; Around him rose the bare, discolored walls. Close by, the steeds were champing in their stalls, And in the corner, a revolting shape, Shivering and chattering, sat the wretched ape. It was no dream; the world he loved so much Had turned to dust and ashes ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... optimism. He has reprinted one of his cartoons showing him chattering the party walls of 'Jacobson's Jellicoe,' with the big gun ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... boys never play together in the same group. Time and again one comes suddenly on a romping group of chattering, naked little boys or girls. They usually run noiselessly into the nearest foliage or behind the nearest building, and there stand unmoving, as a pursued chicken pokes its head into the grass and seems to think itself ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... in the wrong place. The dogs were still snarling, and strained at their chains after these men, as the white-haired man landed with them. The three big fellows spoke to one another in odd guttural tones, and the man who had waited for us on the beach began chattering to them excitedly—a foreign language, as I fancied—as they laid hands on some bales piled near the stern. Somewhere I had heard such a voice before, and I could not think where. The white-haired man stood, holding in a tumult of six dogs, and bawling orders over their din. Montgomery, ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... idleness and insipidity, we turn to the sky as a last resource, which of its phenomena do we speak of? One says it has been wet, and another it has been windy, and another it has been warm. Who, among the whole chattering crowd, can tell me of the forms and the precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded the horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came out of the south, and smote upon their ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... and allow it to approach them, when the fatal blow is given. I saw an illustration of this the other day. A large number of goldfinches in their fall plumage, together with snowbirds and sparrows, were feeding and chattering in some low bushes back of the barn. I had paused by the fence and was peeping through at them, hoping to get a glimpse of that rare sparrow, the white-crowned. Presently I heard a rustling among the dry leaves as if some larger ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... what occurred so immediately before me, we were not at once sensible of the departure of the robbers, but continued near half an hour after their disappearance in the same situation in which they left us. The short breathings and the chattering of teeth, lately so audible from within the interior, gradually subsided, and were succeeded by whispers of the females, and soon after by words pronounced in a louder tone; whilst our mangled guides, by groans and writhings, gave evidence of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 478, Saturday, February 26, 1831 • Various
... not think it strange that I skipped grammar as well as rhetoric; all seemed to me to come together naturally: I retained the words, their forms and inflexions, in my ear and mind, and used the language with ease in writing and in chattering. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... of all horses loathes a bad rider) showed the whites of his eyes wickedly, laid his ears back into his mane and bucked madly with fright. The Chinaman, chattering like a monkey, described a perfect parabola and alighted right side up on the only tuft of ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... now addressed him in a kind tone. He at once answered, and was soon chattering away either with him or Kalinda, with whom he appeared to be a favourite. After this, as he had recovered his spirits, Hendricks called him to come and sit by his side, and speaking in the Zulu language, questioned him as to his early recollections, when his answers fully confirmed ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... and pushing, what rustling and hustling! What hissing and twirling, what chattering and bustling! How it shines and sparkles and burns and stinks! A true witch-element, methinks! Keep close! or we are parted in ...
— Faust • Goethe
... every strange call and mimics crude attempts to reproduce its varied notes. The blue kingfisher is investigating the tumour made by white ants in the bloodwood wherein the nest is annually excavated, and soon the chattering notes of the pair will be heard. A week ago few signs of the approach of the scene-shifter were discernible. He has come, and plants and birds respond to his genial and becoming presence—plants with richer growth ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... consternation fell upon us all, as if a bombshell had burst in our midst; for, Sam, who was looking the opposite way to us and could see over our heads, suddenly sprang upon his feet, his mouth open from ear to ear and his teeth chattering with fear, while his short, woolly hair seemed literally to crinkle up ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... perched on the top of some tall sapling; nor charmed with the blithe carol of the lark as we proceed early afield; none of our birds at all rivalling these divine songsters in realising the poetical idea of the "music of the grove;" while "parrots' chattering" must supply the place of "nightingales' singing" in the future amorous lays of our sighing Celadons. We have our lark certainly, but both his appearance and note are a most wretched parody upon the bird ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... purple opalescent sea, Flung like a ribbon limp athwart the sky, A rose lay blooming on the restless lea, While sundry birds came chattering sweetly by. 'Twas then my soul that all too long had slept, Awoke from out ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs
... he replied, that he had sold her to an honest woman named Am Solomon, who had promised to pay him on the next Friday ten pieces of gold. The wife was contented, and when Friday arrived, her idiot of a husband having, as usual, taken a dose of bang, repaired to the tree, and hearing the bird chattering, as before, said, "Well, my good mother, hast thou brought the gold?" The bird croaked. Supposing the imaginary woman refused to pay him, he became angry, and threw up his spade, which frightening the bird, it flew from the nest, and alighted ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... pick our way through the crowds of strange people who were moving backwards and forwards in every direction. Carts were passing to and fro; groups of Indians squatting on their haunches were chattering together, and displaying to one another the flaring red and yellow handkerchiefs, the scarlet blankets, and muskets of the most worthless Brummagem make, for which they had been exchanging their bits of gold, while their squaws looked on with the most perfect indifference. ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... acknowledged that without The Jupiter life was not worth having. This kind of hidden but still conscious glory suited the nature of the man. He loved to sit silent in a corner of his club and listen to the loud chattering of politicians, and to think how they all were in his power;—how he could smite the loudest of them, were it worth his while to raise his pen for such a purpose. He loved to watch the great men of whom he daily wrote, and ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... and the player, the former assuming a fraternal air for an end of his own, joined the royal group, Nell re-entered gaily, every inch the man. She was still surrounded by the ladies, who, fluttering, flattering and chattering, hung upon her every word. With one hand she toyed with her mask, which she had good-naturedly dropped as none were about who knew her. She clapped it, however, quickly to her eyes at sight of ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... the scene was still merry and bright, for there Gurkha ladies were massed in their many-coloured saris, chattering for all the world like the parrakeets they resembled. Dogs barked; pet names were squealed; old men waved their staffs; children clung to the waggons and whooped, and when the cortege finally turned into the hospital compound and I cantered back ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... away I was conscious that Hawkins was chattering volubly to a crowd of eager faces. His own features were bruised almost beyond recognition, but he, too, was evidently on this side of the River Jordan, and I felt a faint sense of irritation that the Auto-aero-mobile hadn't ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... the moment when the world renews its life, touched my soul with that anguish which the familiar spectacle has always and will never fail to cause as long as a human heart beats beneath the heavens. And, dropping behind the chattering crowd that in mourning-weed wended its way through the sad spring landscape, I thought of her whom I had loved so long and should never see again. I thought of memory as a shrine where we can worship without shame, of friendship, and of the ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... affection as easily as her brilliancy won admiration. Nor did she monopolize the conversation. She could draw others out as skillfully and fully as she could talk herself, and Anne and Diana found themselves chattering freely to her. Mrs. Pendexter said little; she merely smiled with her lovely eyes and lips, and ate chicken and fruit cake and preserves with such exquisite grace that she conveyed the impression of dining ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... breadth of ten paces for the free movements of the actors. Regnard, in Le Distrait, gives us an amusing description of the noise and disorder these fashionable petit-matres in his day kept up in this privileged place, how chattering and laughing behind the backs of the actors they disturbed the spectators, and drew away attention from the play to themselves as the prominent objects of the stage. This evil practice continued even down to ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... at the fountain-head, instead of having it brought to their rooms. The Hazlehursts were not the only party of our acquaintances who had arrived the night before. The Wyllyses found Miss Emma Taylor already on the ground, chattering in a high key with a tall, whiskered youth. The moment she saw Elinor, she sprang forward to ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... Mark read, and trusted to his friend for reports, and meanwhile the two schooners sailed on with their prize crews in the wake of the Nautilus. In due time Port Goldby was reached, and the freed slaves disembarked, all chattering and happy as ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... had to cast lots about the last, which they could not divide. One of them fetched some dice out of his pocket—gambling was a favourite pastime of Roman soldiers—and they settled the difficulty by a game. Look at them—chaffering, chattering, laughing; and, above their heads, not a yard away, that Figure. What a picture! The Son of God atoning for the sins of the world, whilst angels and glorified spirits crowd the walls of the celestial city to look down at the spectacle; and, within a yard of His sacred Person, ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... pleasure as she was going home. The children had all gone on some steps before her, chattering eagerly among themselves, when Sam turned back and said abruptly, "Miss Fosbrook, you didn't mind THAT, ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fight. The proposal was welcomed with glee by the suitors, who promised on oath to see fair play for the old man in his quarrel with a younger. But when they saw the mighty limbs and stout frame of Odysseus, they deemed that Irus had brought trouble on his own head. Chattering with fear Irus had to be forced to the combat. One blow was enough to lay him low; the ease with which Odysseus had disposed of his foe made him for a time popular ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... of sparrows. They kept dashing at him in scores, and from all points at once. The unfortunate hawk was quite powerless. At last, approaching some scrub, the hawk dashed into it and remained there, while the sparrows congregated in groups round the bush, keeping up a constant chattering and noise" (Paper read before the New Zealand Institute; Nature, ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... out and looked at it carefully, and then she called the other girls to look at it. And soon there was such a clattering and chattering that the boys came racing that way to see if the girls had found anything good to eat. ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke
... moose. Many other shorter-legged creatures were swimming aimlessly, turning this way and that, paddling their feet only enough to keep afloat. On the shore where Neewa and Miki paused was a huge porcupine, chattering and chuckling foolishly, as if scolding all things in general for having disturbed him at dinner. Then he took to the water. A little farther up the shore a fisher-cat and a fox hugged close to the water line, hesitating to wet their precious fur until death ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... two porters became military, and smiled with a special and peculiar urbanity. Several lesser but still lordly functionaries appeared among the pillars; a page-boy emerged by magic from the region of the chimney-piece like Mephistopheles in Faust's study; and some guests of both sexes strolled chattering across the tessellated pavement as they passed from one wing of the hotel ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... at the picture of a visiting dominie sitting on the edge of a chair with his toes slowly freezing, while his parishioners tried in quaking tones and with teeth chattering ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... speak French, made up to him in their turns, in order to display their wit and address, and teased him with several arch questions, to which he made no other reply than "No parly Francy. D— your chattering! Go about your business, can't ye." Among the masks was a nobleman, who began to be very free with the supposed lady, and attempted to plunge his hand into her bosom: hut the painter was too modest to suffer such indecent treatment; and when the gallant repeated ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... Mrs. Lemmington was there, and Mrs. Florence, and many others with whom Mrs. Marygold was on terms of intimacy, besides several "distinguished strangers." Among those with whom Mrs. Marygold was unacquainted, were two young ladies who seemed to attract general attention. They were not showy, chattering girls, such as in all companies attract a swarm of shallow-minded young fellows about them. On the contrary, there was something retiring, almost shrinking in their manner, that shunned rather than courted observation. And yet, no one, who, attracted by their sweet, modest ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... There was a lively chattering along the tables while the girls were waiting for the serving of the first course, the soup. This was brought to the table in great tureens, one for each table, the guardian who sat at the head of the table serving the soup ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... great bear she was going to keep house for. No one could quite see how the affair had come about, for Canute's tactics of courtship were somewhat peculiar. He apparently never spoke to her at all: he would sit for hours with Mary chattering on one side of him and Ole drinking on the other and watch Lena at her work. She teased him, and threw flour in his face and put vinegar in his coffee, but he took her rough jokes with silent wonder, never even smiling. He took her ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... in that. You can make no defence. You left my service faithlessly and heartlessly, with the hope of marrying a fortune. The marriage failed, and you come back with falsehood in your heart and on your lips, chattering about your love for my royal house. You are not ashamed to liken yourself to a hound, and to howl even as they do, in order that I may take you back into favor. Do not suppose, for one moment, that I am deceived ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... the spot where, seventy years before, a futile Carlylean Teufelsdrockh had stopped to ask futile questions of the silent infinite — the infinite seemed to have become loquacious, not to say familiar, chattering gossip in one's ear. An installation of electric lighting and telephones led tourists close up to the polar ice-cap, beyond the level of the magnetic pole; and there the newer Teufelsdrockh sat dumb with surprise, and glared at the permanent ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... afterwards, thinking no more about him, we continued our course up the river. About an hour had elapsed, during which we had gained upwards of a mile, when again nearing the bank on that side, we heard a loud chattering and screaming. "That's Jacko, sir," said one of the men, and others expressed the same opinion. We manned the jolly-boat, and sent it on shore towards the place where the noise was heard. The monkey did not wait till the bow of the boat touched the shore, but springing into it when some feet ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... chattering arose. Every sophomore there except Miriam Nesbit raised a protesting voice. Grace held up her hand for silence, then summoning all her dignity ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... to a chattering woman who has just run out of her door, and is standing near him tying a red Madras kerchief on her head as she prattles to a girl,—"madame, ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... and above all, the knowledge of a want of his instructions, and an ardent desire to render them useful. All these were wanting; the person I wished to improve, saw in me nothing but an importunate, chattering pedant: while on the contrary he admired his own importance in the house, measuring the services he thought he rendered by the noise he made, and looking on his saws, hatchets, and pick-axes, as infinitely more useful than all my old books: and, perhaps, in this particular, he might not be altogether ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... of his hand scattered the bevy of maid servants who stood chattering as they gazed upon the new arrivals. The experience of Felix told him that everything had of course gone wrong during his absence from the Manor House, and that nothing could be fit for his mistress's reception until he had set all to ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... sores; but no one took him at his word and expelled him from society, but thought the better of him. Soon he began to study theology, but found no help in suppressing tempestuous lust, in understanding the Bible, or getting his doubts answered, and all the lectures seemed irrelevant chattering. An infidel was a monster whom he had rarely ever seen. At nineteen he began to preach, but his heart was untouched till he read Wordsworth's lyrical ballads, and this recreated a living God for him, melted his heart to tears, and made him long ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... Ashe to his own toilette, and was walking about the room, now Studying herself in the glass, and now chattering to him ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Kate. "How can I think with you chattering? I've got to find you an excuse for going across to Charlie's place. Now what shall it be? I know," she cried, suddenly darting across the room, followed by the ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... I kept our own counsel. She told father, of course, but no one else, not even nurse—it would only have made her nervous. We sent round once or twice to ask how the little Nearns were—mums wrote notes, I think, as she didn't want the servants chattering. And we were very sorry to hear that the poor twins had got it ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... flinging himself fretfully into a chair. "Is our house never to be free of chattering women? The only person here to-day who speaks my language was Gunther, and you never gave me a chance ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... flared; and others, how tenderly pink, and gray, and purplish of hue! What poly-tinted fancies underfoot in the moss! Strange visitants came from the north. Flocks of birds, southward bound, skimmed these alien skies. Sometimes they alighted on the tree-tops or along the banks of the torrent, chattering in great excitement, commenting mightily on ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... stood an angareb,[2] whereon was stretched the motionless figure of a human being shrouded in a black veil. The angareb and its burden had been carried on board early that morning at Korosko by two Arabs, who now sat laughing and chattering in the stern of the barge. It might have been a dead man or a dead woman who lay still and stretched out upon the bedstead, so little heed did they give to it. Calder lifted his eyes and looked to his right and his left across glaring ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... out of account by the poet of the general rule. No one, for example, but a person who knew something of the inside of agony would have introduced that touch of the rage of the mourner against the chattering frivolity of nature, "Thou'll break my heart, thou bonny bird." We find and could find no such touch in Goldsmith. We have to arrive at the conclusion therefore, that the vates or poet in his absolute capacity is defied ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... his chattering teeth and white frozen lips would allow, he begged for forgiveness, for understanding. "He wasn't really wholly ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... you, no flinching; besides, I owe that spider-shanked, snivelling split-cause Coates, who stands sentry, a grudge, and I'll pay him off, as Paul did the Ephesians. You may crop his ears, or slit his tongue as you would a magpie's, or any other chattering varmint; make him sign his own testament, or treat him with a touch of your Habeas Corpus Act, if you think proper, or give him a taste of blue plumb. One thing only I stipulate, that you don't hurt that fat, mutton-headed Broganeer, whatever he may say or do; he's a devilish good fellow. ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... talk!" Pao-yue then whispered, "for, mind, we'll also induce them to start chattering." After this, they ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... drawing-room of a spacious mansion, in the suburbs of the city where Agnes Wiltshire resided, is seated a young man, apparently perusing a volume which he holds in his hand, but, in reality, listening to a gay group of young girls, who are chattering merrily with his sister at the other end of the apartment. Scarcely heedful of his presence, for he is partly concealed by the thick folds of a rich damask curtain,—or, perhaps, careless of the impression produced, ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... 'languages'[105] is one whose trustworthiness not even you would have esteemed lightly; and he thinks no ill of you. Indeed I have never disliked you as far as concerns private feelings. There are persons living in your town who were chattering here about 'all the disciplines having been invented by godforsaken wretches'. Certainly persons of this description, whatever name must be given them, are in the ascendancy everywhere, all studies ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... loungers who amused themselves by spending their mornings at Mademoiselle Melanie's exhibition-rooms, giving orders for dresses, bonnets, etc., examining new styles of apparel, discussing the most becoming modes, or idly chattering with acquaintances who visited Mademoiselle Melanie upon the same important mission ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... let go, when the monkey leaped on to the bulwark, seized a rope, and went up it hand over hand in a quadrumanous manner to a height that he considered safe, and there held on and hung, looking down at the dog, chattering ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... That, by my rogue's honor, shall be done to your heart's content. Now be wide awake, friend Hassan! First to a tavern! My feet have work enough cut out for them. I must coax my stomach to intercede with my legs. (Hastening away—returns.) Oh, apropos! My chattering made me almost forget one circumstance. You wished to know what passed between Calcagno and your ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a hollow in the road, across which a tiny beck, now swollen with the rains, was chattering bravely. Falling in with my companion's humour, I dismounted, and, after his example, hitched my mare's rein over the rail. There was a raciness about the adventure that took my fancy. We chose two boulders from a heap of ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... grenadier of a hat. Beside it all, he felt himself dwindling into insignificance, despite the hind-side-before waistcoats of the visiting clergymen and his mother's gown of stiff black satin. It was a positive relief to him when he could turn his back upon the whole hot, chattering function, and, with Catia's new gilt-initialled bag to balance his much-rubbed suitcase, go striding away to the station underneath the wintry freshness of the night. Catia had rebelled at the idea of walking to their train; ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Edward Buxley and Freshfield Sumner at a cross-path, on their way to Brookfield; and then Adela joined the party, which soon embraced Mr. Barrett, and subsequently Cornelia. All moved on in a humming leisure, chattering by fits. Mr. Sumner was delicately prepared to encounter Mrs. Chump, "whom," said Adela, "Edward himself finds it impossible to caricature;" and she affected to laugh at ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... when she could not run out of doors, and no lessons, no books to pore over, no music, no great parlor full of strange things that she never tired of inspecting, no pretty ladies in silk and satin gowns, chattering and laughing. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... so little to her as now. It appeared as if that keen unity of a life common to her and all living things had been broken or obscured; and that she walked in an isolation all the more terrible in that she was surrounded by the dumb presence of what she loved. Last year the quick chattering cry of the blackbird, the evening mists over the meadows, the stir of the fading life of the woods, the rustling scamper of the rabbit over the dead leaves, the solemn call of the homing rooks—all this, only last year, went to make up the sweet natural atmosphere ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... produced, and the character of its present proprietor. To the last-mentioned inquiry the waiter returned the answer invariably given in such cases—namely, "My master is a terribly hard man, sir." Curious that in enlightened Russia so many people cannot even take a meal at an inn without chattering to the attendant and making free with him! Nevertheless not ALL the questions which the gentleman asked were aimless ones, for he inquired who was Governor of the town, who President of the Local Council, and who Public Prosecutor. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... woodpeckers chattering overhead and the voices of the children coming pleasantly from the hollow below. What they said matters little. What they thought—which might have been interesting—did not transpire. The woodpeckers ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... a quest, a search that never seems to end. I thought that I had finished it to-night, and singularly enough, in this very hotel. I can't go into the matter here with all this chattering mob of people about us, for the story is a sad one. But if ever you should chance to meet a grey lady with brown eyes and ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... chattering from cold, fright, and exhaustion, eagerly drank off the spirit. Vincent, who was wet to the skin with the spray, took a little himself, and then settled himself as comfortably as he could on the floorboards in the ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... undermined as often to fall in under the weight of a horse. Around the entrance to their holes the ground is piled up almost a foot high; on these little elevations the prairie-dogs sit upon their hind legs, chattering to each other and observing whatever passes on the plains. They will permit a person to approach quite near, but when they have viewed him closely, they dive into their dens with wonderful quickness. They are difficult to kill, and if hit, generally succeed in crawling underground ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... wait long enough before he makes me a fool. I am too sharp for the stuff with which he humbugs you, my wise chattering magister!" ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... wild island of Malaita. Twenty of them—familiar, all, to Jerry—were from Meringe; thirty of them came from the Bay of a Thousand Ships, in the Russell Isles; and the remaining twelve were from Pennduffryn on the east coast of Guadalcanar. In addition to these—and they were all on deck, chattering and piping in queer, almost elfish, falsetto voices—were the two white men, Captain Van Horn and his Danish mate, Borckman, making a total ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... longer storm, nor darkness, nor conflict. He beheld his God face to face in the light of the Perfect Day. Slowly at last, beyond the farthest bounds of the dull landscape, broke the white ghostly lines of dawn; and the shouting of the wind, and the rage of the chattering tempest fled down the watery sky with the flying scuds of cloud, away into the distant horizon of the west. But the belladonna-plant lay dead on the stones of the balcony, torn and beaten by the hail and the wind, its trailing stem and ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... are all those things, Comtesse, except, perhaps, the 'chattering of the monkeys.' You don't ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... a pretty prelude to a wedding festival. They were all at their wit's end. While the doctor scratched their arms, they discussed the situation, excitedly and with desperation. Jean was the first to stop chattering ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... of reeds we notice several red-winged blackbirds, chattering nervously. A magnificent male bird, black as night, and with scarlet epaulets burning on his shoulders, swoops at us, while his inconspicuous brownish consorts vibrate above the reeds, some with grubs, some empty mouthed. ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... horrible threat, Caius Nepos merely bent his head as if in humble submission to the will of one who was as a god. He felt his teeth chattering against one another, his limbs trembling, his blood frozen within him, and with it all he had the additional horror of knowing that the brutish tyrant was looking him through and through, that he saw the fear in him and was gloating on ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy |
