half-hectoring

Updated: May 26, 2025

No honest, sun-burned rustics these, but pallid, narrow-eyed folk whose half-furtive, half-hectoring air gave me a sense of evil streets, of dark alleys and dens where iniquity lurked, and my alarm and abhorrence waxed acute, finding vent in words: "What vile wretches!"

Jeffery Farnol - Peregrine's Progress