"Housemaid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... black and awful, filled her soul at last. The choice seemed to lie between going out as an ordinary servant and starving. Even as a housemaid she would want this not-to-be-got-over reference. In this darkest-hour before the dawn she saw Madame Mirebeau's advertisement for sewing girls, and in sheer despair applied. Tall, handsome girls of good address, were just what madame required, and somehow—it was the ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... two, Pa, Ma, and daughters three, All drove in madcap hurry to the station, In fact, they might have tittered "Seven are we" Had they remembered the superb quotation; But Julia (housemaid) made some lamentation About some best back hair she'd left behind, But all was done to soothe her perturbation Till she became more quietly inclined; This nat'rally destroyed her ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... on a cotton gown—very neat, I dare say—for an under housemaid; and such thick shoes! She had on a little black straw bonnet, and a kerchief that might have cost tenpence, pinned across her waist instead of a shawl; and she looked altogether—respectable, no doubt, but exceedingly dusty! And she was hanging upon ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... thus deaden all natural feelings of affection. We have spoken a good deal to the slaves here, and they seem anxious to obtain their freedom. The brother of one of the waiters at our hotel had twice been swindled by his master of the money he had saved to purchase his freedom. I spoke to the housemaid at our hotel, also a slave, who shuddered with horror when she described the miseries occasioned by the separation of relations. She had been sold several times, and was separated from her husband by being ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... set the chairs for the maids, and presently they filed in. First Christina's maid, then the cook, then the housemaid, then William, and then the coachman. I sat opposite them, and watched their faces as Theobald read a chapter from the Bible. They were nice people, but more absolute vacancy I never saw upon ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... surprised to find that every basin is left by the housemaid with cold water in it, and there it stands waiting at all seasons; but such a thing as warm water is considered positively indecent, and the servant generally looks as if she would fall down with amazement at the mention of such a strange ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... antimony, pearl powder, kingfisher, football, housekeeping, infancy, snowball, definite, bowstring, carpet, Sunday, Shylock, earwig, matrimony, cowhiding, welcome, friendship, horsemanship, coltsfoot, bridegroom, housemaid, curl-papers, crumpet. ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... as the children had! There were presents for Mother Brown, and Aunt Lu, and some for Mary the cook, and Jane, the housemaid, and later in the day, when Sallie and her aunt came, there ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope
... however, I found that I could not bear to look upon this lifeless likeness of one who had been taken from me so cruelly, and I caused it to be replaced. I did more. In order that it might not be disturbed by some dusting housemaid, I myself made it fast with three or four tin-tacks which I remember I drove through the velvet stuff into the panelling, using a fireiron as a hammer. At the time I thought it a good job although by accident I struck the nail of the third finger of my left ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... greeting—'This is a beautiful world, Mr. Patmore'—that he remembered nothing else of that interview. I remember one day it so happened that I had to pay a visit to Anthony Hope. I knocked tremblingly at his door in Gower Street and followed the trim housemaid into the dining-room. Here I found an oldish man with his back to me. Turning round at my entrance he said, without any asking who I was, 'Have a cigarette?' And this is all that ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... Hendricks. "I am her counsel. I represent Mrs, Embury. Eunice, say nothing more. Leave it to me. And, first, Shane, you haven't enough evidence to arrest this lady. That dropper thing is no positive information against her. It might be the work of the servants—or some intruder. The story of that housemaid is not necessarily law and gospel. Remember, you'd get in pretty bad if you were to arrest Mrs, Sanford Embury falsely! And my influence with your superiors is not entirely negligible. You're doing your duty, all right, but don't overstep your authority—or, rather, don't let your ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... the fold. Forth issues from his mansion the family of the decent tradesman, the small children in the advance; then the citizen and his comely spouse, followed by the grown-up daughters, with small morocco-bound prayer-books laid in the folds of their pocket-handkerchiefs. The housemaid looks after them from the window, admiring the finery of the family, and receiving, perhaps, a nod and smile from her young mistresses, at whose ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... postage of her letter to Captain Carey, a new housemaid brought Mary his visiting-card on a silver tray. Mary knew, before looking at it—having heard nothing of the letter, and no sound of his arrival in his hired buggy—what name it bore. Her forlorn hope had been too forlorn to stand for anything but despair. ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... sent out on "freak" assignments for special features, such as feigning injury or insanity in order to gain entrance to hospitals in the guise of patients. Recently one woman writer posed as an applicant for a position as moving-picture actress; another applied for a place as housemaid; a third donned overalls and sorted scrap-iron all day in the yard of a factory; and still another accompanied a store detective on his rounds in order to discover the methods of shop-lifting with which department stores ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... which she became mistress she had her difficulties at first. The other servants, especially the butler and the upper housemaid, resented her promotion and sought new situations. Bridie replaced them, replaced the whole staff with ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... after you, and who may not have the means of being liberal over and above the prescribed standard. Under no circumstances is a lady called upon by the rules of etiquette to give fees to men servants; the lady's-maid and the housemaid are the only ones she is expected to remember; but if a gentleman visit where only female servants are employed, he should make them a present on ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... very much. No one from this house, I am sure of that. Now that I think of it, though, Polly sings—Polly, the under housemaid; she has a pretty little bird-like voice, but nothing such as you ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... was a woman of economies, keeping vigilant watch over all expenditures, great and small, and employing one servant only, who was cook, housemaid, and laundress all in one, and expected to give every moment of her time to the service of her mistress, and be content with smaller wages than many ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... two compartments, which were crossed at regular intervals by smaller joists, richly carved, and retaining some traces of gilding. The spaces between had been originally of a deep blue tint, almost lost now under the thick coating of dust and spiders' webs that no housemaid's mop ever invaded. Above the grand old chimney-piece was a noble stag's head, with huge, spreading antlers, and on the walls hung rows of ancient family portraits, so faded and mouldy now that most of the faces had a ghastly hue, and at night, by the dim, flickering lamp-light, they ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... the following semester, and when he came back for the long summer vacation they met on the street one day and exchanged a few rather forced pleasantries. It suddenly dawned on Fanny that he was patronizing her much as the scion of an aristocratic line banters the housemaid whom he meets on the stairs. She bit an imaginary apron corner, and bobbed a curtsy right there on Elm Street, in front of the Courier office and walked off, leaving him staring. It was shortly after this that she began a queer line of reading for a girl—lives of Disraeli, Spinoza, Mendelssohn, ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... lawyer in full practice can be usually supposed as faultless in the eye of heaven as a dove or a woodcock; but it is not, in former divinities, thought the will of Providence that he should be dropped by a shot from a client behind his fire-screen, and retrieved in the morning by his housemaid under the chandelier. Neither is Lady Dedlock less reprehensible in her conduct than many women of fashion have been and will be: but it would not therefore have been thought poetically just, in old-fashioned morality, that she should be found by her ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... without a nurse, too, so that partly accounted for it. Meg, the eldest, was only sixteen, and could not be expected to be much of a disciplinarian, and the slatternly but good-natured girl, who was supposed to combine the duties of nursery-maid and housemaid, had so much to do in her second capacity that the first suffered considerably. She used to lay the nursery meals when none of the little girls could be found to help her, and bundle on the clothes ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... according to Camille, resembles the English Naval one; there is a universal 'Press of women.' Robust Dames of the Halle, slim Mantua-makers, assiduous, risen with the dawn; ancient Virginity tripping to matins; the Housemaid, with early broom; all must go. Rouse ye, O women; the laggard men will not act; they say, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... they also secured a trained nurse. This final attention required special tact, for Miss Anthony's fear of "giving trouble" was so great that she was not willing to have a nurse. The nurse, therefore, wore a housemaid's uniform, and "Aunt Susan" remained wholly unconscious that she was being cared for by one of the best ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... the open hall door as Leeds came down the wide, main stairs. He saw, under the porte-cochere, the trap ready to take him to the station, and into which the second man, with the help of the groom, was lifting his trunk. Here and there a housemaid was busy with duster and cloth. The machinery of the establishment was being set in running condition, and there was the accompanying disorder. The place ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... St. Nicholas the marriage was to take place. Early in November the preparations for it began. No such great event could happen without an extraordinary housecleaning; and from garret to cellar the housemaid's pail and brush were in demand. Spotless was every inch of paint, shining every bit of polished wood and glass; not a thimbleful of dust in the whole house. Toward the end of the month, Anna and Cornelia arrived, with their troops of rosy boys and girls, and their ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... grown-up, respectable people, we often inhabit new dwellings; the housemaid daily cleans them and changes at her will the position of the furniture, which interests us but little, as it is either new or may belong today to Jack, tomorrow to Isaac. Even our very clothes are strange to us; we hardly know how ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... she galloped on Moses, her black pony, through the Herefordshire lanes, and offered pagan sacrifices to some imaginary Athene, "with a bundle of sticks from the kitchen fire and a match begged from an indulgent housemaid." In a letter to Richard Hengist Home, under date of October 5, 1843, in reply to a request of his for data for a biographical sketch of her for "The New Spirit of ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... humorous connection that Thackeray has given it with King George III. That monarch made a royal visit to Gloucester, and in his lectures on the "Four Georges" Thackeray says: "One morning, before anybody else was up, the king walked about Gloucester town, pushed over Molly the housemaid with her pail, who was scrubbing the doorsteps, ran up stairs and woke all the equerries in their bedrooms, and then trotted down to the bridge, where by this time a dozen of louts were assembled. 'What! is this Gloucester new bridge?' asked our ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... become the object of Schubert's later adoration. On the first visit, however, she was only nine, and we find Schubert, with his usual promiscuous taste, more at home with the servants than in the drawing-room. "The cook is a pleasant fellow," he writes; "the ladies' maid is thirty; the housemaid very pretty, and often pays me a visit; the nurse is somewhat ancient; the butler is my rival; the two grooms get on better with the horses than with us. The count is a little rough; the countess ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... brought sorrow or shame to his house, they seemed as little amenable to the discipline he had hoped to exert in his family as the boys were. The elder had married, at fifteen years of age, a journeyman printer; and so, instead of filling the place of housemaid in some good family, as her father had fondly dreamed, she was cook, housemaid, and general servant to a man aware of his rights, and determined to maintain them, and nurse and mother (giving the more important function precedence) ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... sails of ships that took refuge there—on Mondays and Tuesdays. Even my father was symbolized with unparalleled audacity as a watchful government which had, up to the present, no inkling of our semi-piratical intentions! The cook and the housemaid, though remonstrating against the presence of Grits, were friendly confederates; likewise old Cephas, the darkey who, from my earliest memory, carried coal and wood and blacked the shoes, washed the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... at home in the house, that when she found the housemaid on her knees cleaning the hall floor, she passed on unceremoniously to the dining-room, where she felt sure of finding some of the family. It was a spacious room, with a low ceiling where black beams crossed and recrossed each other; with wainscoted walls, and a carved ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... did they do the things they did, and what did they feel, and what was it all about? Again she heard Aunt Lucy talking to Aunt Eleanor. She had been that morning to take up the character of a servant, "And, of course, at half-past ten in the morning one expects to find the housemaid brushing the stairs." How odd! How unspeakably odd! But she could not explain to herself why suddenly as her aunt spoke the whole system in which they lived had appeared before her eyes as something quite unfamiliar and inexplicable, and themselves as chairs or umbrellas ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... surgeon, coolly, "we will wait for the end; and if the end should come sooner than our most sanguine hopes have led us to expect, we will not quarrel with the handiwork of fate. Now leave me. I see a petticoat yonder amongst the trees. It belongs to some housemaid from the castle, I dare say; and I must see if my eloquence as a wandering merchant cannot win me admission within the walls which I dare not ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... greeted Frank and inquired whether he had enjoyed his journey. The story of the accident was told to her. It was evident at once that she took a keen interest in the sprained ankle. Priscilla, describing the scene afterwards to Rose, the under housemaid, said that Miss Lentaigne's eyes gleamed and sparkled with joy. Every one in the household had for many weeks carefully refrained from illness or disability of any kind. If Miss Lentaigne's eyes really did sparkle they expressed a perfectly natural delight. ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... sea-going town of Portsmouth, full of beautiful and romantic houses. In one of the best of them Governor Wentworth invited his friends to a party and flabbergasted them all by turning the "party" into a wedding. He married his housemaid—but she was a beauty! But of all the pleasant things of Portsmouth the Thomas Bailey Aldrich house is the best. This lovely old house is kept exactly as he left it. His spirit seems to pervade the place as a fragrance lingers after the flowers ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... an educated woman—a lady—who tried it as a sort of upper housemaid. The work was easy, the pay good, and she never had a harsh word; but they just seemed unconscious of her existence. She said the gentlemen of the house, father and son, would come in and stand before her to have her take their umbrellas or help ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... tenacious in that respect than the men; they consider, even down to a housemaid, that their sex demands a certain tone of deference, however humble their position, and if a nobleman did not touch his hat to them when they open or shut the door for them, with the usual salutation of good day or good morning, they would pronounce his manners brutal, and say, that although ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... very seriously what she should do. The lack of a housemaid she had made up quite comfortably with her own two busy hands; Mrs. Copley at least had been in particular comfort, whenever she did not get a fit of fretting on Dolly's account; and Dolly herself ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... coming to the Place to morn: Bess housemaid told me. Lord and Lady——: dash My wigs! I can't think on. But there's a mash O' comp'ny and fine ladies; fit to torn The heads of these young chaps. Why now I'd lay This here gun to an empty powder-horn Sir Reginald be in love, or that-a-way. He ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Helmer. Nora, his wife. Doctor Rank. Mrs. Linde. Nils Krogstad. Helmer's three young children. Anne, their nurse. A Housemaid. A Porter. ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... A housemaid in one of the Mayo hotels on coming up to make a fire complained bitterly, not of the toil of coming up stairs, but of the early hour of ten, and do what I would I could get nothing done earlier. On another occasion I was told ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... it—I don't object," said Anne; "but I don't think so, for they have to be directed and guided. To be without a housemaid is dreadful. The moment you think of that, you see how important the people who work are; everything comes to a stand-still without Mary, whereas there are ladies whose absence would make ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... servants say it. Ellen the housemaid and me—but that ain't for the newspapers. So Mr. Walter's home, is he? Well, he do walk about, to be sure, and him not left for New York ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... poles. But here again that rigid duenna did her invaluable service, for if she didn't look handsome in the clothes selected for her, she didn't, as that lady said frankly, look vulgar in them. No longer would you be liable to mistake her for somebody's second-rate housemaid on her day out. The simple diet and the inexorable regularity of her hours also told in her favor, although she herself wasn't as yet aware of the change taking place. Already you could tell that hers was a supple ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... company of their daughters last night. I should warn them to be on the alert lest Anna elopes to Potchefstroom with somebody, probably to take the train and go farther — to Johannesburg or Kimberley, as did Klein Mietje, whom I had hoped to train as our housemaid ——" ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... opportunity tarried. Mrs. Wilson was too often about the passages to make the expedition safe. On one occasion Cicely went to act scout, but found the housemaid sweeping the top landing, and had ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... turned me round with a stare, and then pushed me down to the kitchen and the fat scullion-maids, who assured me that, 'in the respectable families they had the honour to live in, they had never even heard of my name.' One young housemaid, just from the country, did indeed receive me with some sort of civility; but she very soon lost me in the servants' hall. I now took refuge with the other sex, as the least uncourteous. I was fortunate enough to find a young gentleman of remarkable talents, who welcomed me with ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Hours later, Minna the housemaid found Beth sitting up in bed, sobbing hopelessly; and got her tea, and stayed with her, making her put some restraint upon herself by the mere fact of her presence; and presently Beth, in her human ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... covered up in sheets of brown paper, and bade them begin, in a lofty and tremendous voice; and so after a whimper or two, and a kick from his master, into the grate Tom went, and up the chimney, while a housemaid stayed in the room to watch the furniture; to whom Mr. Grimes paid many playful and chivalrous compliments, but met with very slight ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... had closed on Saturday. Monday I was to sail for England, and early that morning the housemaid watched for the carriage. My landlady was growing quivery about the chin, because I had to cross alone to join Mr. and Mrs. James Lewis, who had gone ahead, My mother was gay with a sort of crippled hilarity ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... the wife of Leopold Eberhard. She was the daughter of a baker, and had held the post of housemaid at the small court of Oels in Silesia. Having succeeded in espousing a gentleman of the name of Zedlitz, she turned her attention to the eighteen-year-old Erbprinz of Moempelgard; and her husband, Herr von Zedlitz, not approving of this new relationship, she divorced him and married Leopold. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... Flora, our housemaid, who is a character, has a great deal of dignity and influence among the other negroes, and takes the greatest care of us. She is most jealous for what she considers our interests, and moreover is quite an interpreter, ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... morning in which that event took place, as they were all preparing to go to church, the flames began to burst forth; the young people screamed from the back part of the house, 'A fire! a fire!' and all was in a state of confusion and alarm. The housemaid was not at home, it being her turn for the Sunday 'out.' Kitty, the cook, was taking her place, and performing her duties. The old woman was always very particular on the subject of her responsibility on such occasions, ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... know that if you had a sister, and a mother, and a housemaid, your mother would quite expect that your sister should in time have a lover, but that she would be horrified at the idea of ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... comfortably seated, toasting chestnuts over the fire and enjoying a jug of wine, little Annette, the housemaid, appeared in a black calico dress and velvet turban, with rosy cheeks and lips like a cluster of cherries. She came running up the stairs, gave a hasty knock and threw herself joyfully into my arms. I had known the pretty little girl for a long time; we were of the same ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian
... of some employment, any employment, which a woman could take up; and her last few pence had been spent in one of those advertisements which tell their own tale of despair. She was willing to do anything; she would have taken a situation as a housemaid; would have gone out charing; for life is precious to all of us, and scruples of refinement disappear when there is no bread in the cupboard. But her applications, for even the lowliest place, were turned down; she had no experience, ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... vrai Canayen" is mak' it marie, You t'ink he go leev on beeg flat An' bodder hese'f all de tam, night an' day, Wit' housemaid, an' cook, an' all dat? Not moche, ma dear frien', he tak' de maison, Cos' only nine dollar or ten, W'ere he leev lak blood rooster, an' save de l'argent, Wit' hees ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... straightened her dress, waited a moment, and then pulled impatiently at an old-fashioned bell-rope that hung by the door. There was no answer. Again she rang, but the house lay dark and silent. A little housemaid with brown, startled eyes, came at last, just as she was beginning to grow alarmed at the darkness and stillness, ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... suggested a freezing-machine. The temperature of the house was reduced to ten degrees below zero; the pipes froze (and burst next day), the milk froze, the housemaid's toes and the cook's little finger of the left hand froze, everything froze; and presumably the beetles froze, for there was not ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... her son's wife Joan. She kissed Bernard twenty times, and begged him to come and see her; and Bernard did his best not to cry. There was an early breakfast, but nobody sat at the table two minutes together; something was to be done every moment. Mr. Low walked in and out five or six times. The housemaid and the cook came in to say good-bye; they were going to walk to their homes; and Ralph was to go with his sister, the cook. People, too, were coming with packages from Mr. Evans's, and the bustle kept Bernard from thinking very deeply on what was ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... which Dushyanta[14] or even Rama[15] can hardly be said to live. Shudraka's men are better individualized than his women; this fact alone differentiates him sharply from other Indian dramatists. He draws on every class of society, from the high-souled Brahman to the executioner and the housemaid. ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... a little salt afterwards. It is also advisable to be your own weeding woman, that you may be sure that the weeds come up by the roots! Next to the cast-iron back before mentioned, I recommend a housemaid's kneeling mat (such as is used for scrubbing ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... examples of John Champe and Nathan Hale, beloved of Washington, but of the two estimable young men not long emerged from under the area steps in 5— Street, let us dismiss the contempt with which we have been wont to regard Paul Pry and Betty the housemaid, listening at key-holes, in our favorite dramas, and look mercifully upon the peccadilloes ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... and Mrs. Tulliver's cheesecakes were more exquisitely light than usual. "A puff o' wind 'ud make 'em blow about like feathers," Kezia the housemaid said, feeling proud to live under a mistress who could make such pastry; so that no season or circumstances could have been more propitious for a family party, even if it had not been advisable to consult sister Glegg and sister Pullet ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... and the chief feminine—the chief with the ferula, and the chief with the brimstone and treacle—the master and the matron, each of whom had their appendages—the one in the usher, the other in the assistant housemaid. But of this quartette, the master was not only the most important, but the most worthy of description; and as he will often appear in the pages of my narrative, long after my education was complete, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... She sat down for a moment near the open window. The day was still in its prime. She looked at the clock. The under-housemaid, who had the charge of the schoolroom tea, now came in with the tray. She laid the cloth and spread the tea-things. There was a plate ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... hoisting-engine, an infinite combination of mechanical principles have been applied to the doing of things to save human muscle. To stand by the machine which turns out the familiar grape-basket, ready to fill with the fruit, and then to watch the housemaid bending over some piece of work, is to realize the difference. In few, very few operations is it necessary to-day that men should bend their backs, but in how many household processes is the worker expected to get down on all fours? The free-born American rebels. Perchance it is the unconscious ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... last heard of me; leading the strangest life of absolute Latrappism; and often enough remembering Farlingay and you. I live perfectly alone, and without speech at all,—there being in fact nobody to speak to, except one austerely punctual housemaid, who does her functions, like an eight-day clock, generally without bidding. My wife comes out now and then to give the requisite directions; but commonly withdraws again on the morrow, leaving the monster to himself and his own ways. I have Books; a complete ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... marriage with her cousin; and, liking him better than any one in the world, except her uncle (who was at this time at sea), she went off one morning and was married to him, her only bridesmaid being the housemaid at her aunt's. The consequence was that Frank and his wife went into lodgings, and Mrs Wilson refused to see them, and turned away Norah, the warm-hearted housemaid, whom they accordingly took into their service. When Captain ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... this offending accumulation of many days' neglect. There was not a moment to lose. He was due in ten minutes to meet the possible guests for the Royal at the train. He seized a pail left in the hall by the none too tidy housemaid and with his hands scooped into it the ashes from the stove, and, leaving a cloud of dust to settle everywhere upon tables and chairs, ran down with his pail and back again with kindling and firewood and had a fire going in an extraordinarily short time. He then caught up an ancient ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... that our landlord, shortly after giving us the agreement, could have found some other place to hang himself in than one of our attics, for the consequence was that a housemaid left us in violent hysterics about every two months, having learned the tragedy from the tradespeople, and naturally "seen a ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... commissions to execute. Sometimes he delivers a hare or pheasant; sometimes jerks a small parcel or newspaper to the door of a public-house; and sometimes, with knowing leer and words of sly import, hands to some half-blushing, half-laughing housemaid an odd-shaped billet-doux from some rustic admirer. As the coach rattles through the village, every one runs to the window, and you have glances on every side of fresh country faces, and blooming giggling girls. At the corners are assembled juntas of village idlers ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... Gramont stables from time immemorial) to cleanse windows, brighten mirrors, and polish dingy furniture. Bettina, the antiquated femme de chambre of the countess, who also discharged the combined duties of housekeeper and housemaid, flew about with a bustling activity that could hardly have been expected from her years and infirmities. Elize, the cook, made far more elaborate preparations for the coming of the young viscount than she would have deemed necessary for the dinner to be given to her master's ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... half-talents and her half-principles, of the something in them both that was not stout enough to resist nor yet pliant enough to yield. She stared at the fact on the journey back to Versailles, and all that sleepless night in her room; and the next morning, when the housemaid came in with her breakfast tray, she felt the factitious energy that comes from having decided, however ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... way, in our own little home. There's a hat-rack here under the stairway," she continued, as Russell, murmuring some response, came into the hall. "I'm afraid you'll think it's almost TOO informal, my coming to the door, but unfortunately our housemaid's just had a little accident—oh, nothing to mention! I just thought we better not keep you waiting any longer. Will you step ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... ill enough, I believe; but me and the clothes, and the wedding wherewith the clothes and me are reconciled, produce every night a thrill of admiration. Our cook told my mother (there is a servants' night, you know) that she and the housemaid were "just prood to be able to say it was oor young gentleman." To sup afterwards with these clothes on, and a wonderful lot of gaiety and Shakespearean jokes about the table, is something to live for. It is so nice to feel you have been dead three hundred years, and the sound ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... temptations. Nowadays, he would have to drink a dish of tea with all these penitents. . . . It sounds a little vulgar, as the past will do, if we look into it too closely. We could not let these great folk of old into our drawing-rooms. Queen Elizabeth would positively not be eligible for a housemaid. The old manners and the old customs go sinking from grade to grade, until, if some mighty emperor revisited the glimpses of the moon, he would not find any one of his way of thinking, any one he could strike hands with ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... now) elicited the hushed and cautious fact that he had gone to bed. But old Mac caught the awesome name and glared round, so they hurriedly filled out another for him, from the boss's bottle. Then there was a slight commotion. The housemaid hurried scaredly in to the bar behind and whispered to the boss. She had been startled nearly out of her wits by the Professor suddenly appearing at his bedroom door and calling upon her to have a stiff nobbler of whisky hot sent up ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... pastor. In his Susanna he essayed a more regular and varied versification than that of the ordinary Knittelvers. The apocryphal story of Susanna was in high favor with the Protestant playwrights on account of its vindication of a chaste wife. 63: Ewig immer. 64: Meid; the housemaid who had brought the news to Susanna's mother. 65: Sehen an, 'look on,' 'bring to light.' 66: In in den. 67: Guter ru, 'security'; 'I thought I should be safe there.' 68: Namens ... fr, 'they resorted to crime.' 69: Er Ehre. ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... kneel, for if I do, I shall spoil my new breeches." The thrifty king ought to have hugged him and knighted him on the spot. George's admirers wrote pages and pages of such stories about him. One morning, before anybody else was up, the king walked about Gloucester town; pushed over Molly the housemaid who was scrubbing the doorsteps with her pail; ran upstairs and woke all the equerries in their bedrooms; and then trotted down to the bridge, where, by this time, a dozen of louts were assembled. "What! is this Gloucester New Bridge?" asked our gracious monarch; and ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in sober fact, but must array it in all the theatrical properties of a vulgar imagination; he must give to things more imposing proportions, he colours gaudily; Nature for him is ever posturing in the full glare of footlights. Really he stands on no higher level than the housemaid who sees in every woman a duchess in black velvet, an Aubrey Plantagenet in plain John Smith. So I, in common with many another traveller, expected to find in the Guadalquivir a river of transparent green, with orange-groves along its banks, where wandered ox-eyed youths and maidens ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... in the dust of the floor for a week or two, till it pleased the housemaid to move the dressing-table to brush away the accumulation, when she found the shining one in ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... you women! You exact such rigid morality from the governess and the housemaid! You're full of excuses when ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... tears on beholding the kitchen, and requested that her silver watch might be delivered over to her sister (2 Tuppintock's Gardens, Liggs's Walk, Clapham Rise), in the event of anything happening to her from the damp. Streaker, the housemaid, feigned cheerfulness, but was the greater martyr. The Odd Girl, who had never been in the country, alone was pleased, and made arrangements for sowing an acorn in the garden outside the scullery window, and ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... upon this when a frightened housemaid brought the news that Gaffer Bedshaw had that very morning, not more than an hour back, gone violently insane, and was strapped down at home, in the huntsman's lodge, where he raved of a battle with a ferocious and gigantic ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... rang with extreme violence. Edwards rushed out of the butler's room. The butler fell back, opened his mouth, and pretended to be asleep—snoring moderately. This of itself would have undeceived any one, for when the old hypocrite was really asleep he never snored moderately. The cook and housemaid uttered two little shrieks and slammed their respective doors, while the bell ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... are not trained to discuss the causes which have brought them into the field. An English gentleman will think that his gardener will be a better gardener without than with any excessive political ardor, and the English lady will prefer that her housemaid shall not have a very pronounced opinion of her own as to the capabilities of the cabinet ministers. But I would submit to all Englishmen and English women who may look at these pages whether such an opinion or feeling on their part bears much, or even at all, upon the subject. ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... fearful verisimilitude of this that Lucia's new housemaid had once fled from her duties in the early morning, to seek the assistance of the gardener in killing it. The dish of stone fruit had scored a similar success, for once she had said to Georgie Pillson, "Ah, my gardener has sent in some early apples and ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... AN Irish housemaid who was sent to call a gentleman to dinner, found him engaged in using a tooth-brush. "Well, is he coming?" said the lady of the house, as the servant returned. "Yes, Ma'am, directly," was the reply; "he's just ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... the head of the kitchen stairs. The four maids were huddled together. Mrs. O'Halloran descended on them. She took Molly, who was nearest to her, by the shoulders and shook her violently. The housemaid and Lady Devereux' maid fled at once to the coal cellar. The kitchenmaid sat down ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... have. Something like this: My mother once had a very pretty housemaid who disappeared. Some time after I met her magnificently dressed, and I said, 'Sally, where do you live now?' She replied, 'Please, sir, I don't live ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... greatest rush came around Christmas time. Lucia Day—when the housemaid went about dressed in white, with candles in her hair, and served coffee to everybody at five in the morning—came as a sort of reminder that for the next two weeks they could not count on much sleep. For now they must brew the Christmas ale, steep the Christmas ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... leather covering gets a hole in it, from ripping, or other accidents, it loses its elasticity with its air—an accident which happened to me this very night; for a mouse having gnawed the leather where the housemaid's greasy fingers had left a mark, I sunk gently down, not to soft repose, but on the hard planks, where I uncomfortably lay until the bell warned us to ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... shed many tears for her, you may set them off to the account of our son-in-law, the Prince of Hesse, who is turned Roman Catholic. One is in this age so unused to conversions above the rank of a housemaid turned Methodist, that it occasions as much surprise as if one had heard that he had been initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries. Are not you prodigiously alarmed for the Protestant interest ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... when you would have said that if ever a man's life was hidden and withdrawn it was Tasker Jevons's. And yet it wasn't. You knew it wasn't; and he knew that you knew. He knew that his gardener and his chauffeur and his butler and his cook and his housemaid and his parlourmaid knew that he was sitting in his garden writing, or meditating in his pinewood or basking on his moor in the sun, and that their knowledge penetrated to every house in the village, ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... nearly all he had got. But what matters? Money's nothing to him, except for its uses. My own little mite is my own now, and he shall have every farthing of it for the next election, even though I should go out as a housemaid the next day." There must have been something great about George Vavasor, or he would not have been so idolized by such a ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... cook and one housemaid and a man of all work—all three newcomers, for Presbury insisted—most wisely—that none of the servants of the luxurious, wasteful days would be useful in the new circumstances. He was one of those small, orderly men who have a genius ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... days. The food is good and varied, the charges moderate; the place is spotlessly clean in every part—I could only wish that the hotels in some of our English country towns were up to the standard of the "Concordia" in this respect. "One cannot live without cleanliness," as the housemaid, assiduously scrubbing, remarked to me. It is also enlarged; the old dining-room, whose guests are so humorously described by him, is now my favourite bedroom, while those wretched oil-lamps sputtering on the wall have been replaced by a lavish use of electricity. One is hardly ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... I wish I had a cook, and laundress, and a housemaid. Oh, and a nursemaid, too! It is dreadful to be ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... arms, brown arms, copper-colored arms, and even black arms, but beautiful red arms are not. This fault is seldom to be found with the arms of ladies, which are so constantly kept covered as to be protected from the influences of weather. It is characteristic of a cook, a dairymaid, a housemaid, a field-hand, to have red arms, and it is probably from this association that they have ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... after him. I thought he'd get to be fond of me, if only I was near him. He'd taken service here at Stone Farm, and I took a place here as housemaid; but there was only one thing he wanted me for, and that I wouldn't have if he wasn't fond of me. So he went about boasting that I'd run away from home for his sake, and the other thing that was a lie; so they all thought they could do ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... A housemaid now came forward with bed candles, to show Miss Carden to her room. Grace was going up, as a matter of course, when Jael, busy helping the footman with her boxes, called after her: "The ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... added to the library shelves, where Clarendon and Burnet reigned before them, too often they only passed to a state of dignified retirement and slumber. No hand disturbed them save that of the conscientious housemaid who dusted them in due season. They were part of the furnishings indispensable to the elegance of a 'gentleman's seat'; and in many cases the guests, unless a Gibbon were among them, remained ignorant ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... said Mlle. Girond, returning to her seat and clasping her hands in front of her. "As soon as the housemaid appears in the morning, Nina asks her to come into the room; the money is put into an envelope for Mrs. Grey; the not great luggage is taken quiet down the stair, so that no one is disturbed. Everything is arranged; you know Nina ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... for the housemaid, who would in the absence of her half of Amelie have to help her dress, and gave ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... said the doctor; and then, as the housemaid left the room, "Well, it can't be anything about Dexter now, because he ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... things as a canvasser and never dreamed of how easy it was to get boarders to talking and find out that way. Now I hear that Chester Hunt is advertising for white servants and of course my stunt would be to apply at once for the place of housemaid ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... as to the other servants. She says the maids are still very nervous. I spoke to them for the first time about the noises to-day. The butler's wife has heard sounds, but her husband only scoffs. The upper housemaid thinks ghosts the proper thing, and tolerates them along with the high families to which she is accustomed. The under housemaid is very shy, is Highland, and knows little English, and won't talk, but owns to discomfort, and is scoffed at by the other servants, who think it all part of her having ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... that she was not the mysterious lady who visited Orange's lodgings. Having weighed all the disadvantages, Sara now directed her attention to the advantages she could snatch out of the dilemma. At last she hit on a bold plan. She rang a bell and a housemaid answered the summons. ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... drove him out of the house by her scandalous conduct. Yes, indeed; although you may not believe me, Di. You were away in Australia at the time, but I kept a watch on Lydia in your interest, dear, and our housemaid heard from your housemaid the most dreadful things. Why, Mr. Vrain remonstrated with Lydia, and ordered Count Ferruci out of the house, but Lydia would not let him go; and Mr. ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... choice; and Life is short. You have heard as much before;—yet have you measured and mapped out this short life and its possibilities? Do you know, if you read this, that you cannot read that—that what you lose to-day you cannot gain to-morrow? Will you go and gossip with your housemaid, or your stable-boy, when you may talk with queens and kings; or flatter yourselves that it is with any worthy consciousness of your own claims to respect that you jostle with the hungry and common ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... enemies were wofully chagrined; but what perfected their annihilation was the palpable lie which my appearance gave to their false assertions. They had blazoned forth everywhere that my manners were those of a housemaid; that I was absurd and unladylike in my conduct; and that it was only requisite to have a glimpse of me to recognize both the baseness of my extraction, and the class of society in which my life had been hitherto ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... day's sport we went home happy and pleased with ourselves, not in the least depressed if we had drawn a blank, to jolly and delightful meals, without any formality at all. And if we were wet, there was a great drying-room off the kitchen premises where our clothes were dried by a housemaid who really understood the business. As for our tackle, we dried our own lines and pegged them under the verandah, and rewound them again in the morning, made up our own casts, and generally did everything for ourselves without a retinue of attendants. ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... committed homicide; and he might make the details as gruesome as he liked. But there was no need to shock the sensitive when he made his choice of the circumstances in which the poet, Stephen Byrne, inadvertently throttles his housemaid. It is a fault, too, that his scheme only interests him so far as it concerns Stephen and his society, and that the horror of the tragedy from what one may loosely call the victim's point of view does not seem to affect him at all. Otherwise, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... scarcely understanding why, accused of having by my naughtiness made ray poor mamma so ill, and discovering for the first time that I was a miserable, naughty little fretful being, and with nobody but Clarence and the housemaid ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... same relation to typhoid," said the Doctor, eyeing the other with solemnity, "as housemaid's ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... needn't be away more than about an hour and a half. I don't quite remember how she'd got all she knew about the times of the trains. I think it was from the cook or housemaid at Miss Bogle's, for I know she said one of them came from near Hill Horton, and that she was very good-natured, and liked talking about Margaret's home and ...
— Peterkin • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... They at once perceived that the hall-door was open, and Mrs. Carbuncle, as she crossed the pavement, saw that there were two policemen in the hall. The footman had been with them to the theatre, but the cook and housemaid, and Mrs. Carbuncle's own maid, were with the policemen in the passage. She gave a little scream, and then Lizzie, who had followed her, seized her by the arm. She turned round and saw by the gas-light that Lizzie's face ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... time his eyes were wandering to the other side of the aisle. Mrs. Payne tried to follow their direction. Here, presumably, was a fairly representative collection of the female inhabitants of the village. Here she might expect to find the farmer's daughter, or, in the last emergency, the housemaid, on whom his affections were centred. She heard no more of Considine, only watching Arthur's eyes, and watching, she soon discovered that these were for Mrs. Considine and her alone. She could not deny the fact that Gabrielle, with her fine pale profile set against a pillar of grey sandstone, ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... powders on every chair, Alice and I were laying a coat of invisible green over the cave-cask, and Philip, in radiant good-humour, was giving distance to his woodland glades in the most artful manner with powder-blue, and calling on us for approbation—when the housemaid came in. ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... something amiss; and she believed Alice knew what it was: but she had not told either cook or housemaid a syllable about it. By Morris's account, Alice had been playing the mysterious in the kitchen as her mistress had in the parlour. Mr Grey had been suddenly sent for, and had saddled his horse himself, as his ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau |
