Quoits

“ The quata, or quato, is very large, with an enormous tail: their arms and legs being covered over with long black hair, they make a very hideous appearance indeed; the more so, as the creature’s face is quite naked and red, with deep sunk eyes, which gives it much the appearance of an old Indian woman. It has short ears, and only four fingers without a thumb on its hands or fore feet, but it has five toes on the hinder feet, all of which have black nails. The extremity of its tail has a spiral turn inwardly ”

“ At last the mass opened, and a monk, mounted on a donkey, appeared. The monk spoke and gesticulated, and the ass brayed.
“Ventre de biche!” cried Chicot, “listen to the preacher.”
“A preacher on a donkey!” cried Quelus.
“Why not?”
“He is Silenus,” said Maugiron.
“Which is the preacher?” said the king, “for they speak both at once.”
“The underneath one is the most eloquent,” said Chicot, “but the one at the top speaks the best French; listen, Henri.”
“My brethren,” said the monk, “Paris is a superb city; Paris is the pride of France, and the Parisians a fine people.” ”

“ It is good for you; I heard Aunt Pike saying so to father. She said you were growing up shy and gauche. I don't know what gauche means; do you?"
"No," said Kitty, colouring. "I expect I ought to, and I expect it is something dreadful; but if I am happier so, why can't I go on being gauche?"
"Father said you were very shy, but he didn't think you were the other thing—gauche."
"Did he?" cried poor Kitty, brightening; but her face soon fell again. "Father doesn't notice things as quickly as some people do—Aunt Pike, and Lady Kitson, and others; and I expect they are right. ”

“ And after all, the lion has not been sent against you; it is a present to the King."
"Pray, sir," cried Don Quixote, "will you attend to your own business? This is mine, and I know best whether this lion has been sent against me or not. Now you, sir," he cried to the keeper, "either open that cage at once, or I'll pin you to your wagon with my spear."
"For mercy's sake, sir," cried the driver, "do but let me take my mules out of harm's way before the lion gets out. My cart and my mules are all I have in the world, and I shall be ruined if harm comes to them." ”

“ That all maisterless men who live idlie in the Cyttye without any lawfull calling, frequenting places of common assemblies, as Interludes, gaming houses, cockpitts, bowling allies, and such other places, may be banished the Cyttye according to the laws in that case provyded. ”

“ But I must tell you a little more about the Quakers, who not only founded Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, and gave to the State and the city their peculiar character, but who exercised a deep and lasting influence upon the spiritual life of the people, both of England and New England. In Sweden we know the Quakers merely as a strange sect which says thou to everybody; will not take an oath; and wear their broad- brimmed hats in the presence of every one. We know them only from little outward peculiarities. I have here become acquainted with their inward significance for the whole of humanity. ”

“ Henri grew pale. “With whom?” said he.
“With Antragues?”
“On the contrary, he killed a lackey of Quelus’s.”
“Oh!” murmured the king, “here is a civil war lighted up.”
Quelus started. “It is true,” said he.
“Ah,” said Chicot. “You begin to perceive it, do you?”
“But, M. Chicot, you cried with us, ‘Death to the Angevins!’”
“Oh! that is a different thing; I am a fool, and you are clever men.”
“Come, peace, gentlemen; we shall have enough of war soon.”
“What are your majesty’s orders?” ”

“ Go your way, good Sir, settle the basin on your head more straightly, and study to find out, if you have wits enough, how many feet a cat has.'
'You are a cat and a rat and a knave!' said Don Quixote in a rage. And without a word he set on him so fiercely, and without giving him time to defend himself, that he struck him to the earth badly wounded with his lance. Luckily for the Knight this was the Guard that had the firelock. ”

“ Quatermain, rather sharply.
"Believe me," answered the old hunter, with a quaint courtesy and a little bow of his grizzled head; "though I have lived all my life in the wilderness, and amongst savages, I have neither the heart, nor the want of manners, to wish to deceive one so lovely."
Whereat the young lady, who was pretty, looked appeased.
"This is very dreadful," I broke in. "We ask for bread and you give us a stone, Mr. Quatermain. The least that you can do is to tell us the story of the tusks opposite and the buffalo horns underneath. We won't let you off with less." ”

“ Poor Quentin, who was at that age when a young man is apt to slide rather than fall into a regular love fit, was gradually being ensnared.
"The companionship of these few days I shall remember for ever," said he. "You shall indeed be sorrowed for, hermana mia."
"Think only of the present, and not of parting," said she, letting her cheek sink upon his shoulder, as they sat, hand in hand, in the window of the little boudoir, the objects of which were half hidden in the twilight. ”

“ Don’t you see, my boy, he furnished the specimen he saw with the tail plumage of three different varieties of the macaw—the green the blue, and the red. Pete’s eyes played tricks with him that time. I wish he would see the long floating feathers of a quetzal flashing its green and gold and purple in the sunshine.”
“So do I, uncle,” I replied. “I wish we could find and shoot dozens of them, but I don’t long for the task of skinning them; they are so delicate and likely to tear.”
“Like all the birds related to the cuckoos,” said my uncle; “but we were very successful over this. ”

“ It was no time to explain her preference for crackers or request the onlookers to stroke her head. Allowances must be made of course for the exigencies of a limited vocabulary, but it did seem to be carrying things too far for that irate fowl to stand up to her full height, red anger riding her like a hag, and call in a gentle, high-pitched voice "Kitty, Kitty, Kitty," while the object of her adjurations lurked below waiting an opportune moment in which to scratch out a clawful of feathers.
Polly is no more. ”

“ Eager to hear whether the queer old fellow had made any discovery, I departed next morning by the eight o’clock express for London, having left a note with Beryl’s maid explaining the cause of my sudden journey, and soon after eleven was seated with the old German in his lofty laboratory. The table was, as usual, filled with various contrivances—bottles of liquids and test-tubes containing fluids of various hues—while before him, as I entered, a small tube containing a bright blue liquid was bubbling over the spirit-lamp, the heat causing the colour to gradually fade. ”

“ How little can be done in the way of extracting virtues or intellect from a piece of broad-cloth or a beaver hat, we have an instance in the Quakers, who are the most remarkable, and the most unexceptionable class of professors in this kind. They bear the same relation to genuine characters, not brought up in the trammels of dress and custom, that a clipped yew-tree, cut into the form of a peacock or an armchair, does to the natural growth of a tree in the forest, left to its own energies and luxuriance. The Quakers are docked into form, but they have no spirit left. ”

“ THE meaner the dog, under some circumstances, the quicker he has his day, however. While Bill toiled in his widening and deepening hole in the ground, and little Max with patience infinite climbed one after another of the rocky involutions of Quitobaquita, Chotty Bedell drank and gamed. His money melted, particularly after he killed the man at Sediente who made fun of the scars and toothless gaps in Chotty’s face. For then Chotty had to recross the line, and take his chances that Ajo had forgotten his looks and character. ”

“ Every class seems to have its own social laws, and what is forbidden to me is quite good form with my dressmaker. Isn’t it absurdly funny?”
“You must study your position.”
“Why should I, if I strictly preserve my incognito? That I do this, even you, Uncle Colin, will admit!”
“Are you quite certain that this Mr Drury is unaware who you really are?” I asked.
“Quite. He believes me to be Miss Natalia Gottorp, my father German, my mother English, and I was born in Germany. That is the story—does it suit?”
“I trust you will take great care not to reveal your true identity,” I said. ”

“ Nobody knows how the guinea-hen liked her sitting, for none but herself and the boy knew where her nest was hidden in a pile of old rubbish down by the cow-pond.
"MADE HER PUT OUT HER TONGUE"
When a night had passed, and a new day showed poor Quackalina the twenty little eggs actually under her breast—eggs so little that she could roll two at once under her foot—she did not know what to think. But like many patient [79] people when great sorrows come, she kept very still and never told her fears. ”

“ We must take Chaucer's remark to mean that 'Sooth play is what a Fleming would call quaad play'; which is then quite correct. For just as Flemish does not use the English words sooth and play, so English seldom uses the Flemish form quaad, equivalent to the Dutch kwaad, evil, bad, spelt quade in Hexham's Du. Dict. (1658) . Cf. also O. Friesic kwad, quad, East Friesic kwâd (still in common use) . The Mid. Eng. form is not quad, but (properly) quēd or queed; see examples in Stratmann, s. v. cwêd. In P. Plowman, B. xiv. 189, the qued means the Evil One, the devil. Queed occurs as a sb. ”

“ Don Quixote, imagining that this must be the dwarf at last giving notice of his coming, rode quickly up to the inn door, beside which it chanced that there stood two very impudent young women, whom the Knight imagined to be two beautiful ladies taking the air at the castle gate.
Astonished at the sight of so strange a figure, and a little frightened, the girls turned to run away. But Don Quixote stopped them.
"I beseech ye, ladies, do not fly," he said. "I will harm no one, least of all maidens of rank so high as yours." ”

“ Chicot retorted, and a quarrel seemed approaching, when Chicot, feeling some one touch his arm, turned, and saw the king disguised as a simple bourgeois, and accompanied by Quelus and Maugiron, also disguised, and carrying an arquebuse on their shoulders.
“What!” cried the king, “good Catholics disputing among themselves; par la mordieu, it is a bad example.”
“Do not mix yourself with what does not concern you,” replied Chicot, without seeming to recognize him. But a new influx of the crowd distracted the attention of La Hurière, and separated the king and his companions from the hotel. ”

“ Quackenboss,--"pardon me--it is not that--I would be understood to say, merely, that I do not comprehend how such--a--such security--can be attained respecting what seems so--a--elevated--and difficult to know."
"Only by believing," said Mrs. Plumfield with a very calm smile. "'He that believeth on him shall not be ashamed;'--'shall not be ashamed!'" she repeated slowly.
Dr. Quackenboss looked at Fleda, who kept her eyes fixed upon her aunt. ”

“ All through that long, wretched drive home Kitty's indignation waxed hotter and hotter, for she kept her gaze studiously on the window, and the glimpses she got of all the beauty they were passing through only served to increase it. Here the way lay through the soft dimness of a plantation of young larches, their green, feathery branches almost meeting across the road ”

“ With a woman’s natural instinct she sometimes exerted her coquetry over me when we were alone, and by that I felt assured she was by no means averse to my companionship.
Often I gave young Chetwode a passing thought. I hated the prig, and thanked the Fates that he was not there. Sometimes his name was mentioned by one or other of the guests, and always in a manner that showed how her engagement to him was accepted by all her friends. Thus any mention of him caused me a sharp twinge. ”

“ Quitte, feminine, ‘quince,’ from the equivalent Middle High German quiten, feminine (Old High German *quitina is wanting) , with the remarkable variant küten, from Old High German chutina (Swiss χütene) , ‘quince.’ This latter form alone renders it possible that Quitte was borrowed from the equivalent Romance cotônea, which is probably represented by Italian cotogna and French coing (whence English quince and Dutch kwee) . ”

“ QUECKETT.
Mind!
RANKLING.
[Outside.'] Mr. Saunders!
SAUNDERS.
Here, sir.
[Peggy makes a bolt out of the room. Saunders goes to the door, and returns with Rankling. Rankling is in evening dress, overcoat, and muffler, and is much out if breath.]
RANKLING.
Ah, Mr. Queckett, how do you do? We haven't met anywhere lately; I've been away, you know.
QUECKETT.
I am delighted to renew our acquaintance, Admiral Rankling.
RANKLING.
[Puffing.] Mr. Mallory suggested that we should smoke our last cigar at your lodgings. I can't stay, for I've a long distance to drive home. ”

“ Quentin laughed, realizing that the man with the lantern and the short pike was a night watchman.
“Pay no attention to the man with the pike,” said he. “If he sees you again and starts to follow you, look him straight in the eye, and say to him firmly: ‘I have the key.’ It is the magic word. As soon as he hears it, he will go away.” ”

“ Who could he be? Some young spark of the town? Some clerk in one of the stores? a young planter? who? Maybe—and with this thought came that bitter pang—one of her own proscribed race—a young man of “colour”—a mulatto—a quadroon—a slave! Ha! to be rivalled by a slave!—worse than rivalled.—Infamous coquette! Why had I yielded to her fascinations? Why had I mistaken her craft for naïvété?—her falsehood for truth?
Who could he be? I should search the boat till I found him. Unfortunately I had taken no marks, either of his face or his dress. My eyes had remained fixed upon her after their parting. ”