"Impish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... avowed with a chuckle, was to convey fear to the beholder of his work. It was an impish trick, and it brought him unwittingly into peril of ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... some of Scorch's sayings and his impish doings; so they were some miles on the journey before she began to look ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... the middle of the stairs, because he did not know what he was going to do, and he seemed to lack force for decisions. No harm could have happened to Christine; she had run off, that was certain. And yet—had he not often heard of the impish tricks of explosions? Of one person being taken and another left? Was it not possible that Christine had been blown to the other end of the street, and was now lying there?... No! Either she was on her way home, or, automatically, she had scurried ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... open. She was leaning on the sill, but he could not tell whether or not her eyes were turned his way. Her attitude was pensive, disconsolate, curiously forlorn for a girl normally high-spirited. He was on the point of signaling to her when he remembered Furneaux's presence. There was something impish, almost diabolically clever, in that little man's ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... goes on and the dance is o'er, And the merry girls are homeward gone, But I see it all in my sleep once more, And I dream till the very break of dawn Of an impish dance on a red-hot griddle To the screech and ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... her two ringed hands to smother the impish joy of her laugh. "A warning to those who can be warned—he will not be so eager for another stripe from that same stick!—It was his cousin, Seniha Hanum—Satan devour her!—who made this marriage. Always she hated me.... But now ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... to laughter, adieu to merriment, adieu to good stories. Wear mourning for her, weep and fancy her dead, groan. Then she raises her head, her merry laugh rings out again; she spreads her white wings, flies one knows not wither, turns in the air, capers, shows her impish tail, her woman's breasts, her strong loins, and her angelic face, shakes her perfumed tresses, gambols in the rays of the sun, shines forth in all her beauty, changes her colours like the breast of a dove, laughs until she cries, cast the tears of ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... about the stump, and capered foolishly. He looked with ape-like curiosity at Heeley's horse, then made an impish jump at the animal, grinning and growling savagely. The horse threw up his head, snorted in terror, and pulled back, dragging Heeley with him, broke free, and bolted into the night. Cursing wildly, Heeley ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... mankind. And when vulgar wonder at the strange beast had somewhat subsided, and I could get nearer the cage and watch the gorilla, I was more and more impressed with the human traits which I discovered in the extraordinary animal. His manner of reclining was, though impish, half human; and his grotesque gait, as he sprang from side to side of the narrow prison, was suggestive of his supposititious congener-man; even his terrible howl, which rent the air of the museum constantly, had a human shade ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... till it guttered and flickered in its pool of melted tallow, and the shadows it threw upon wall and ceiling seemed instinct with an impish life of their own, as though they were dark spirits from the pit come to mock the final hours of the life that ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... the upper story, visible above the wide staircase. After four years of legal tenebration it was obvious that the ambassador's intention was to celebrate the Armistice as well as the visit of his King to Paris with an almost impish demonstration of the recaptured right to extravagance, obliterate the dry economical past. The ambassador's country might be intolerably poor after the war, but like many other prudent nobles he had invested money in North and South America, and was able to entertain his sovereign out of his ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... nine-year-old brat, in hooping-cough and measles, who, had there not been such a quadruped as a dog created, would have worried itself to death before evening, so lamentably had its education been neglected, and so dangerous an accomplishment is an impish temper. The twelve cases for the year of that most horrible disease, hydrophobia, have, we flatter ourselves, been satisfactorily disposed of—eight of the alleged deceased being at this moment engaged ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... juvenile habit. Carr raised his voice. An Indian woman, not yet of middle age but already inclining to the stoutness which overtakes women of her race early in life, appeared in the doorway. She spoke sharply to the boy in the deep, throaty language of her people. The boy, with a last impish grin, gave the man's leg a final shake and scuttled indoors. ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... art what one could aptly call a man. But thou'rt endowed with somewhat too much heart! How queer thou art, cross-grained and impish shrewd! A spirit too, thou couldst not be more shrewd. If all I say thou dost not think is true, In secret just a minute search pursue; For then thou'lt know if I ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... me?" she asked faintly, and oh, but she would have given much to hear the girl's impish laugh of assent. Instead, she saw Nella-Rose's ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... Rosamund's amazement, and a scream almost rose to her lips, when she entered and saw, curled up snugly in Jane's bed, no less a person than Irene Ashleigh. Irene's exceedingly bright face peeped up above the clothes. She gave a low, impish laugh, and then ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... I half expected him to pretend ingenuousness, and spring the tale of Dierdre's adventure with Herter on the company. But he preserved a discreet reticence, more for his own sake than mine or his sister's, of course. He's as lazy as he is impish, except when there's some special object to gain, and probably he wished to avoid the bother of explanations. As for Brian, his extreme sensitiveness is better than studied tact. I'm sure he felt magnetically that Dierdre O'Farrell shrank from a reference to her ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... once began its circling motions, whipping the snow into the traveller's face, blinding and choking him, lashing him mercilessly and with a sudden impish delight, as if all the evil spirits of the air had ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... had milled around and around many times in the brief while he had ranged La Partida. A new deal was needed and needed badly, else Wilfreda Bernard would have debts instead of revenue if Singleton let things drift much longer. Her impish jest that she was a damsel in distress in need of a valiant knight was nearer to truth than she suspected. He had an idiotic hungry desire to be that knight, but his equipment of one horse, one saddle, and one sore head appeared inadequate for ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the vault above her and yet unlocated in the sinister pall that spread over the skies. Her fancy ofttimes pictured him sailing in the west when he should be in the east, dodging back and forth in impish abandon behind the screen, and she wondered at such times if he would be where he belonged when ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... elbow jostled. She turned to find young John Drew Dominick Murphy, a protege of the school, and an intimate acquaintance of her own, regarding her with impish delight. ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... slowly. Her beautiful lips curved upwards at the corner, giving an air of impish mischief to her face. She nodded her head three times over, and hitched a shoulder ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... or of the fire-lighting fairies mentioned in spiritualistic literature. This helpful attitude, however, is comparatively rare, and in most cases when they come in contact with man they either show indifference or dislike, or else take an impish delight in deceiving him and playing childish tricks upon him. Many a story illustrative of this curious characteristic may be found among the village gossip of the peasantry in almost any lonely ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... reason you are likely to do it. My idea is, make ambition your business and indifference your relaxation, and you will fail; but make indifference your business and ambition your relaxation, and you will succeed. So impish are the ways ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... been happy for hours together watching the great stones grind, or the corn poured by golden showers into the hopper on its way to the stones below. Many a time had he crept up and hidden himself behind a sack; but George seemed to have an impish ingenuity in discovering his hiding-places, and would drive him out as a dog worries a cat, crying, "Come out, thee little varment! Master Lake he don't allow ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... towards him; and from being his good friend, with established intimacies, she had turned before his very eyes into an alien, almost an enemy, more beautiful than ever, to be true, but perverse, mocking, impish. She flouted him for his youth, his bluntness, his guileless transparency. But hardest of all to bear was the delicate derision with which she treated his awkward attempts to express his passion for her, to speak of the fever which had taken possession of him, almost ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... afternoon customers were in such a rush to catch trains for their Main Line suburbs that they seldom remained long enough to give conductor and orchestra a well-deserved ovation. So nobody ever quite knew whether the dead-pan Stoky was in earnest or moved by an impish sense of humor when, following the usual thin smattering of ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... moment she turned to me with a twinkle in her eye that was hardly less than impish. Indeed, I may say that she flew at me much like an angry wasp when a chance of your walking-stick stirs ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... so much over her fascinating picture had unhinged his brain. From that moment a hardness came over his heart. He shut his lips grimly. What was the use of talking? Whatever he said would be discredited on this impish theory. And, even without it, how incredible his story, how irrelevant to the charge of ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... when the blessed doorbell rang and delivered us, and Miss Josephine St. Michael entered with John Mayrant. He wore a most curious expression; his eyes went searching about the room, and at length settled upon Juno with a light in them as impish as that which had flickered in my own ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... she trusted—whilst, having plentiful evidence of his presence in London, Dr. Cairn and himself vainly sought for Antony Ferrara; whilst any night might bring some unholy visitant to his rooms, obedient to the will of this modern wizard; whilst these fears, anxieties, doubts, and surmises danced, impish, through his brain, it was all but impossible to pursue with success, his vocation of journalism. Yet for many reasons it was necessary that he should do so, and so he was employed upon a series of articles which were the outcome of his recent visit to Egypt—his editor having ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... twitching. Around him, but a long way off, the dancers rocked and circled with long raucous cries dominated by the sobbing booming music, and in the sunlit space between dancers and holy man, two or three impish children bobbed about with fixed eyes and a grimace of comic frenzy, solemnly ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... "How dare you, sir?" and gave him a shake and blow. Robin stood with a sullen look on his face, and hands in his pockets, and his brothers followed suit. Armine hid his face in his mother's dress, and burst out crying; but Jock stepped forth and, with that impish look of fearlessness, said, "I did it, Uncle Robert! I wanted to make Aunt Ellen laugh. Did she laugh, mother?" he asked in so comical and innocent a manner that, in spite of her full consciousness of the heinousness of the offence, and its general unluckiness, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of crows came sailing with the snow-squall. They alighted all about on the hummocks, and curiously watched the two men battling to save life. One black impish bird, more malignant or more sympathetic than his fellows, ventured to poise on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... with an "Ave!" hail'd the lady to the place, The impish band, each with his hand conceal'd his ugly face, And Satan stared as though ensnared, but speedily regain'd His wonted air of confidence, and still ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... exercise her impish arts of tantalisation and her wiles of fascination on Don Carlos during the remainder of her stay at Auchinleven. Sometimes she would seem, metaphorically, to throw herself at his head and appear to be eager to surrender herself, at other times she ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... to a stand at the gate of the little front garden of Tower Cottage, she saw, through the mist, Beaumaroy's corrugated face; he was standing in the doorway, and the light in the passage revealed it. It seemed to her to wear a triumphant impish look, but this vanished as he advanced to meet her, relieved her of the neat black handbag which she always carried with her on her visits, and suggested gravely that she should at once go upstairs ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... her that Grace didn't study a single bit that whole afternoon. Twice when the coast was clear, she actually turned around with the heart in her hand, but some way her courage failed her. One look into Johnny's impish eyes paralyzed her hand. Finally she decided to put it on his desk when he went to the board. She would wait till he was almost back to his seat so nobody could get it, and, then ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... a queer conception of the proprieties. He may think that you come to see me." A radiant smile leaped into her face, transforming its strange sombreness into absolutely impish mirth. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... a divining-rod. "She says to the emigrants," observed Powers, "'Here is the gold, if you choose to take it.'" But in her face, and in her eyes, very finely expressed, there is a look of latent mischief, rather grave than playful, yet somewhat impish or sprite-like; and, in the other hand, behind her back, she holds a bunch of thorns. Powers calls her eyes Indian. The statue is true to the present fact and history of California, and includes the age-long ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mayhap, to set up the button as rival to the safety pin in service to humanity. But our homage bends toward the former. Not only was it our shield and buckler when we were too puny and impish to help ourselves, but it is also (now we are parent) symbol of many a hard-fought field, where we have campaigned all over the white counterpane of a large bed to establish an urchin in his proper gear, while he kicked and scrambled, witless of our dismay. It ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... approaching spring had penetrated even into these abodes of darkness, and aroused in the bats a little life after their long hibernation; and their weak, plaintive squeak, which had something impish in it withal, came from every shadowy recess, and from the dark vault overhead. This "Rotunda" should have been called ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... Kissock's writing!" Winsome said at once. Ralph had the same thought. So in a few moments they traced the whole plot to its origin. It was a fit product of the impish brain of Jess Kissock. Jess had sent the false note of appointment to Ralph by Andra, knowing that he would be so exalted with the contents that he would never doubt its accuracy. Then she had despatched ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... like the impish devils that Michael Angelo sculptured, putting out their tongues in silent mockery of ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... know,' he replied nonchalantly. His manner towards her changed. He was still soft and kind, and bland in his impish wit, but beneath the surface he was brutal, revengeful, cruel, and she felt the force of the ruthless egoism that had won him his position in spite of disabilities which would have hampered and even checked a less forceful man.... In the same moment she understood that what had been a ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... into my mind confirmation enough of part at least of the poor devil's story. His curious moods, his manner as he entered the room this evening, O'Brien's impish allusions to liquor when I first visited the house, all fell into their places now. Yet utterly as this had exploded my hopes, I think I was more glad than sorry to see the doctor come out of the ordeal with only this kind of stain on his character. ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... An impish smile quite obliterated the Christmas-angel look for an instant, then vanished, and left her a pretty, abused maiden who is grieved ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... Timmy also always knew how to manage his delicate, nervous father. John Tosswill realised that Timmy might some day grow up to do him credit. Timmy really loved learning, and it was a pleasure to the scholar to teach his clever, impish, youngest son. ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... She found it moist, though his face was calm and his chest heaved regularly. An impish form of the pity women feel for us at times moved her to say, "Your skin is as bronzed as it was last year. Sandra spoke of it. She compared it to a young vine-leaf. I wonder whether girls have really an admonition of what is good for them while they are going their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... quite unconscious of her tears; her hands were clenched, and her eyes saw nothing but Don's impish little face. ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... awning, but the dread apparition of his aunt's husband had twisted his nerves like wires struck by lightning, and he could do nothing. His is essentially the artistic temperament, and he is a creature of moods, impish in some, poetic in others; an extraordinary fellow, like no one I ever saw, yet curiously fascinating, and I find myself growing oddly fond of him, in an elder-brotherly, protecting ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... the two she had dropped in upon. The water flew in all directions, and Migwan fled over the rocks to avoid being drenched. Medmangi and Nyoda also came up thirsting for vengeance, but Sahwah escaped by swimming under water around the dock and clambering out on the rocks. She made an impish grimace at Migwan, who was standing on the rock where she came up. Migwan leaned over and put a streak of soap on her face, Sahwah promptly caught Migwan by the feet and pulled her off the rock into the water. Struggling, they both went under and came up choking and ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... blood ran too hotly for camp-fire argument. When the time for fighting came, well and good: none would be more eager than he; but meanwhile love and laughter, play and strife, invited a man, and Jim responded with the impetuosity of an impish boy ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... made up an impish face at her as she retreated. Then he entered the church himself to inspect progress, returning immediately to take up his position of sentry again. About noon Anderson passed on his way to ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... response to Don's orders, the patrol came to headquarters to clean up for that night's meeting. Tim brought with him an impish, reckless desire for fun. While the others tried to sweep, he lined up a string of camp stools and played leap-frog down the length of the meeting-place, ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... and the purest, most conventional maternal agony was in the tone. For an instant, crushed and terrified, she looked at him; and then something gay and impish appeared in her eyes, and she asked ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... look at her. Her large blue eyes grew wide in wonder. She was barely fourteen. Her skin was like a rose, soft, pink, fresh; her hair was very fair; the expression in her eyes was partly impish curiosity, partly a vague childish fear. Perceiving that Demetrio eyed her like a beast of ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... where there is not a tithe of the impish humour that exists in Ireland, the Socialists have so misused the immense bureaucracy that must carry on the mere clerical work of insurance, that a new law passed the Reichstag in June, 1911, containing ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... had each some pleasant quality. This unfortunate fellow had none. He was small, mean, cunning, a sneak and a mischief maker. He carried tales, told lies, and tried to make trouble, for no reason but to gratify his inclinations. He was a dark impish looking fellow, as lean as Cassius and as crafty and envious as Iago. The chief clerk, to his credit be it said, gave a deaf ear to his tales, and his craft and cunning obtained ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... flowers it was similar, though far more difficult to detect in detail for description. I saw the smaller vegetable growth as impish, half-malicious. Even the terraces sloped ill, as though their ends had sagged since they had been so lavishly constructed; their varying angles gave a queerly bewildering aspect to their sequence that was unpleasant to the eye. One ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... and learned to take pleasure in synthetic formulas. The thought of very primitive men has hardly any tincture of philosophy. Nature can have little unity for savages. It is a Walpurgis-nacht procession, a checkered play of light and shadow, a medley of impish and elfish friendly and inimical powers. 'Close to nature' though they live, they are anything but Wordsworthians. If a bit of cosmic emotion ever thrills them, it is likely to be at midnight, when the ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... But the impish gods who delight in turning upside down the best-laid plans of mice and men were working overtime to-night. They arranged it that a girl cowering among the wet bushes bordering an unfrequented path heard the "Hi—yi—yi" ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... not want to hear any more. The conversation had become displeasing to him, though he could have given no reason for his displeasure. But Poppy suddenly turned mischievous and naughty. She patted her hands gently together between her knees and swayed with rather impish merriment. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... began to feel creeping upon her all the old pleasure and excitement of noise and wine and an intriguing situation. Her hardness vanished. She sat almost with complacency, breaking her roll with two small hands, and looking at Gaga with that thin little grin which caused her meagre face to be so impish and attractive. The brilliant lights which made Sally more and more piquante had a ghastly effect upon Gaga. His grey ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... would have been hard put to it to find any reasonable explanation of what his eyes witnessed. In the middle of the hall some five singular figures stood on line: two tall, powerful lads with foolish faces, flagrant farm-hands; an old, bowed man with the snow of many winters on his hair; an impish lad who might have welcomed fourteen springs; and, finally, a rubicund, buxom woman with very red cheeks, very blue eyes, very brown hair, whose person suggested the kitchen a league off. Each of these persons handled a pike, carrying it at an angle different from that of the others, and each ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... impish in your mood to-day!" exclaimed Lady Engleton. "What should we do without our Great Majority, as you call it? It is absolutely necessary to put some curb on the wild impulses of pure reason"—a sentiment that Hadria greeted with chuckles ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... and reprisals, of white striving to outdo red in cruelty, may seem to harmonize but ill with that soft June morning, the flight of the red-start, the song of the oriole and the impish chatter of the squirrels. Beech and oak urged one to rest in the shade; the limpid waters of the river called for one to ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... the sylvan scenes about them. It is a curious sight to see these big anthropoids, almost as large as human beings, swing themselves deftly up among the festooned creepers at my approach—to see their queer, impish black faces peering cautiously out of their hiding-place, and to hear their peculiar squeak of surprise and apprehension as they note the strange character of my conveyance. Sometimes a gang of them will lope awkwardly along ahead of the bicycle, looking ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... look of high purpose that marked his face in repose. It was as though Puck had turned poet and then had turned preacher. One looked at the fleshy lower lip and the jutting ears, and thought of a careless, impish creature; one looked at the shapely, pointing nose and the kindly, unflinching eyes, and thought of a man reckless of himself in the pursuit of some fine purpose. One saw immediately that he was a man who could be moved easily when ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... Among all the impish offspring of the Stone God, wizards and witches, that made Detroit feared by the early settlers, none were more dreaded than the Nain Rouge (Red Dwarf), or Demon of the Strait, for it appeared only when there was to be trouble. ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... over her shoulder as Trent called out, her blonde hair glinting in the warm afternoon sunlight. Blue eyes smiled an impish greeting at him. ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... Lois saw, when once she lifted them up, and took in, as it were, the aspect of the sea-captain and her cousin with one swift searching look. About the stiff, tall, angular mother, and the scarce less pliant figure of the daughter, a girl of twelve years old, or thereabouts, played all manner of impish antics, unheeded by them, as if it were her accustomed habit to peep about, now under their arms, now at this side, now at that, making grimaces all the while at Lois and Captain Holdernesse, who sat facing the door, weary, and somewhat disheartened by their ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... prayer-books in their hands, walked to the neighbouring church. There Laura sat once more between the boys, Marina and Georgy stationed like sentinels at the ends of the pew, ready to pounce down on their brothers if necessary, to confiscate animals and eatables, or to rap impish knuckles with a Bible. It was a spacious church; the pew was in a side aisle; one could see neither reading-desk nor pulpit; and the words of the sermon seemed to come from a great ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... for the office was, I imagine, the gift of aggressive political leadership. The Turkish government now favored one nationality and now another as the interests of the moment seemed to suggest. With an impish delight in playing off Slav against Greek and Servian against Bulgarian, its action on applications for bishoprics was generally taken with a view to embarrassing the rival Christian nationalities. And it could ...
— The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 - Third Edition • Jacob Gould Schurman
... Thus the impish Steevens baited his hook. The sport which followed must have exceeded his expectations. Any one familiar with the bare outline of Elizabethan literary history should have perceived that a trap had been set. The ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... eying the disputants with evident interest. To the left a large space was devoted to three or four bulky casks, and here an aproned drawer sat astride of a rush-bottomed chair, grinning delightedly and exchanging nods and winks from time to time with an impish, undersized lad who lay on his stomach on a wine-butt with his head craning forward over ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... difficult to outwit as it was to outfight him. But there was another curious side to his complex nature. The French have said of one of their heroes, 'Il avait cette graine de folie dans sa bravoure que les Francais aiment,' and the words might have been written of Powell. An impish humour broke out in him, and the mischievous schoolboy alternated with the warrior and the administrator. He met the Boer commandos with chaff and jokes which were as disconcerting as his wire entanglements and his rifle-pits. The amazing variety of his personal ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... through the shining glasses of his copper-rimmed spectacles, like two little lights in the dark. She had gone down those three steps, looking round shyly, afraid of getting dirty; had explained her business to that impish little chap; and had then hastily fled from that hell. Now it seemed to her that those two eyes had looked at her so kindly; and she wondered how any one could live in such a hole and be a Christian creature ... and yet that smith looked ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... could talk, if she wanted to, for she certainly hears quick enough. She's real impish, witch-like, and she fair gives me the creeps," complained Norah to a stable lad early on that Sunday morning. "And I don't half like for Miss Dolly to 'point me special nurse to the creatur'. I'd rather by far be left to me bedmakin' an' dustin'. She may be one ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... a web that lies In fleecy folds across his impish eyes, A tiny archer takes his way intent On mischief, which is his especial bent. Across his shoulder lies a quiver, filled With arrows dipped in honey, thrice distilled From all the roses brides have ever worn Since that first wedding out of Eden born. ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... high spring. "Boloo!" they cried. "Baayah. Boloo!" They were the children of the men folk, the smoke of whose encampment rose from the knoll at the river's bend. Wild-eyed youngsters they were, with matted hair and little broad-nosed impish faces, covered (as some children are covered even nowadays) with a delicate down of hair. They were narrow in the loins and long in the arms. And their ears had no lobes, and had little pointed tips, a thing that still, in rare ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... wonderful dream since first he had beheld the charming fur-clad figure enter his office at Sachigo. He had realised, even in those first moments, the impish act of Fate. Nancy McDonald was the one woman in the world who could mean life—real life to him, and they were definitely arrayed against each other in the battle for commercial supremacy in ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... midst of these horrors—diableries, the Jesuits called them—as if the very elements had been moved with pity, there burst over the darkened forest a terrific hurricane of hail and rain. This put out the fires and drove all the tormentors away but a few impish children, who stayed to pluck nails from the hands and feet of the captives and shoot arrows with barbed points at the naked bodies. Every iniquity that cruelty could invent, these children practised on the captives. Red-hot ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... the watch there!' cries Jasper in a fury: so quickly roused, and so violent, that he seems an older devil himself. 'I shall shed the blood of that impish wretch! I know I shall do it!' Regardless of the fire, though it hits him more than once, he rushes at Deputy, collars him, and tries to bring him across. But Deputy is not to be so easily brought across. With a diabolical insight into the strongest part of his position, he is no sooner ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... pictures of the moon's surface. And," she added with a dreary kind of vindictiveness, "it's here, and I'm here. I can't get away from it—that's the dickens of it." Then, because Helen May had a certain impish sense of humor, she sat down and laughed at the incongruity of it all. "Me—me, here in the desert trying to raise goats! Can ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... Amanda, with impish delight. "That's one on you. Aunt Rebecca ain't so dumb like she lets ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... before in a Paris music hall—there leapt to life within Joan's brain a little impish creature that took possession of her. She hoped the miracle would not happen. The little impish creature within her brain was marching up and down beating a drum. She wished he would stop a minute. ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... pauseless industries are here and there marked on the distance. Vast factories stand close to the track, and reaching chimneys emit roseate flames. At last one may see upon a wall the strong reflection from furnaces, and against it the impish and inky figures of workingmen. A long, prison- like row of tenements, not at all resembling London, but in one way resembling New York, appeared to the left, and then sank out of sight ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... all is, that they help the good and wise people to do things better; but they love to plague and punish the dull folks, that are stupid, or foolish or naughty. In impish glee, they lure the blockheads, or in Dutch, the ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... wife:—dead—and naked; the wasted white limbs gleamed in the lurid light; the unclosed eyes stared, as if reproachfully, at the husband whose drunkenness had brought her there to kill her with the pestilence; and on each side of her a little, shrivelled, impish, child-corpse,—the wretched man had laid their arms round the dead mother's neck—and there they slept, their hungering and wailing over at last for ever; the rats had been busy already with them—but what matter ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... the cause of it all. How he hated himself for yielding to that impish impulse that had so often gotten him into trouble! Now, all he could think of was that somebody would be killed, and it would be his fault and his alone. His heart was full ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... it in her snappiest way, too! I shouldn't be a month about going if I were you. Hello! There's the bell. Ta-ta, I'm off! I wish you luck!" and Ida Bridge fled to the region of her own classroom, with a grin on her impish face. ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil |
