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Updated: April 30, 2025
Then he turned the knob and entered his partner's office. Mrs. Emma McChesney was reading a letter. More than that, she was poring over it so that, at the interruption, she glanced up in a maddeningly half-cocked manner which conveyed the impression that, while her physical eye beheld the intruder, her mental eye was still on the letter. "I knew it," said T. A. Buck morosely.
The last straw, however, breaks the camel's back, and this last drink reduced Mr Villiers to that mixed state which is known in colonial phrase as half-cocked. He lurched out of the hotel, and went in the direction of the Pactolus claim.
But it was a half-hearted attempt at best, for everyone's ear was strained for the front-door bell, and everyone had an eye half-cocked toward the window. Before the half hour was up the game had fizzled out. And still Dacre Wynne did not put in an appearance. Borkins, having been summoned, brought in some whisky and Merriton remarked casually: "Mr.
We knew every part of the horse as a man knows his face, and we knew every strap and buckle. Ump sat on his mare, waiting until we should be ready, kicking his stirrups with impatience, but his tongue, strangely enough, quiet. He turned his mare across the road before us when we were in our saddles. "Jud," he said, "don't go off half-cocked. An' if there's hell raised, look out for Quiller.
Let's go!" as he started on a run for the testing shed. "Wait a minute!" crisply shouted Crane. "Don't go off half-cocked. What is your plan?" "Plan, hell!" barked the enraged chemist. "Chase 'em!" "Which way did they go, and when?" "Straight up, full power, twenty minutes ago." "Too long ago. Straight up has changed its direction several degrees since then.
Of course, you don't ever want to go off half-cocked and bring down a cow instead of the buck you're aiming at, but always remember that game is shy and that you can't shoot too quick after you've once got it covered. When I go into a fellow's office and see his desk buried in letters with the dust on them, I know that there are cobwebs in his head.
Works adjourn'd have many stays, Long demurs breed new delays." "Look before you leap," old Commodore Vanderbilt used to say. "I like active men, but I have no use for the fellow who is so much in earnest that he goes off half-cocked." We all know the danger of a gun that goes off half-cocked, but it is not so apt to bring disaster as is the man who goes off without due preparation.
"Just the same, sir, I cannot and will not accept," said Braden, finality in his tone. "I cannot tell you how shocked, how utterly overwhelmed I am by—" Simmy interrupted him. "I'd suggest, old fellow, that you take Mr. Thorpe's letter to your rooms and read it. Take time to think it all out for yourself. Don't go off half-cocked like this."
At length, sight of joy! a moving object is seen, and it gives rise to the usual inquiries, Who is it? and what can be his errand? The old whitish-grey coat, the hobbling gait, the hat half-slouched, half-cocked, announced the forlorn maker of periwigs, and left for investigation only the second query. This was soon solved by a servant entering the parlour, "A letter from Monkbarns, Sir Arthur."
So saying, he thrust his hand into one of the deep pockets of his broad-skirted coat and drew forth, not an infernal machine, but an instrument in writing, which he laid with great emphasis upon the table. The burghers gazed at it for a time in silent awe, as a wary housewife does at a gun, fearful it may go off half-cocked.
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