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I didn't start this war and I'm not making any peace overtures." "You're as obstinate as the devil," smiled Peter, but in his heart he admired the dourness of his friend. The engineer went to Macdonald and gave a deleted version of his talk with Elliot. The Scotchman listened, a bitter, incredulous smile on his face. "Says he didn't bring her, does he? Tell him from me that he lies.
If the rain was pouring at the Junction, then Drumtochty stood two minutes longer through sheer native dourness till each man had a cascade from the tail of his coat, and hazarded the suggestion, halfway to Kildrummie, that it had been "a bit scrowie," a "scrowie" being as far short of a "shoor" as a "shoor" fell below "weet."
Elizabeth flashed back at him the same smile, a sudden gleam of white even teeth in a rather generous red mouth. Brother and sister were very much alike in their smiles, but only here, for John's face was solemn almost to dourness, while Elizabeth's countenance was full of light and animation. "The Rowdy" was enough to provoke laughter even on the Sabbath and under Aunt Margaret's nose.
"Surly old devil, Sourdough," men had been wont to say of him; "but, by gee! there's no getting around him; you can't fool Sourdough. He'd go for a grizzly, if the grizzly wouldn't give him the trail. Aye, he's a hard case, all right, is Sourdough. You can't faze him." He hugged them to him. He gloried in all such tributes to Sourdough's dourness.
Together with a strong desire for knowledge there was a certain dourness in Tamihana's nature, and when he applied for admission to St. John's College, a question is said to have arisen about smoking. The rules of the institution prohibited this pleasant vice, and Tamihana would not give up his pipe. Strange to think of the tremendous consequences which flowed from that simple refusal!
The particular aspect of Puritanism which belongs to rigid Calvinism, in all its grim austerity, was confined so far to a very limited section: for the majority an extensive biblical vocabulary was consistent with a thorough appreciation of virile carnal enjoyments: the dourness of John Knox hardly infected the neighbouring country.
Perhaps it was because he had been ashamed to go back and own himself beaten, or perhaps it was his native Border dourness that had caused him to stick to it; but at any rate he did stick to it though, like most sailors, he growled, and even swore sometimes, that he hated the life.
And while Grimond had all the imperturbable self-satisfaction and unshaken dourness of the Lowland Scot, and never on any occasion acknowledged that he could be wrong or changed his way, he almost wished that he had left this affair alone and had not meddled between his master and his master's wife.
There are blood colts running chiefly to stomach, splints and bog spavins; ponies with shaggy manes, trim barrels, and clean legs; and slack-jointed cart-horses nearly asleep for "ginger" is an institution which does not seem to have come so far north as Inverness. Business is lively here, the chronic "dourness" of a market being discounted by the scarcity of horseflesh.
"Remember you are a Raincy by name, whatever you may be by nature," said the old man. Suddenly the boy stood up straight and firm before him, with a dourness on his face which was clearly not akin to the swoop and dash of his vulturine grandfather.
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