half-welcoming

Updated: July 25, 2025

Patterson looked at him with a half-dismal, half-welcoming smile. "Well, you are a h-ll of a fellow, ain't you?" Spencer Tucker passed his hand through his hair and lifted it from his forehead, with a gesture at once emotional and theatrical. "I am a man with a price on me!" he said bitterly. "Give me up to the sheriff, and you'll get five thousand dollars. Help me, and you'll get nothing.

Bret Harte - On the Frontier

"I looked for you last week," he said, in a half-grumbling, half-welcoming manner; "and was disappointed uncommonly that you didn't arrive. There came a runner through, to warn all the trappers and hunters that the colony and the Canadas were again in trouble; and I felt lonesome, up in these mountains, with three scalps to see to, and only one pair of hands to protect them."

James Fenimore Cooper - The Deerslayer