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And while she was watching Denise, the cross-grained old nun who acted as concierge to this quiet house came into the room, and handed Denise a long blue envelope. "It is addressed in a man's handwriting," she said warningly. "Then let us by all means send for the tongs," answered Denise, taking the letter with a mock air of alarm.
His features were sharp and lean as was his body, and wore every appearance of a cross-grained temper. He had been making divers complaints of divers persons, and the captain had hitherto appeared imperturbable. Captain Plumbton was an even-tempered man, who was satisfied with a good dinner. Lieutenant Markitall was an odd-tempered man, who would quarrel with his bread and butter.
That isn't to say for a single instant, however, that I didn't esteem her. We simply were not designed to fit into the same scheme. We were of different generations. We were of cross-grained stuff, if I may say so, dour and tough and ill to match with common deal, and our roots were sunk in the restless, estranging sea.
He was not the least cross-grained, and, having had his little spurt, he settled down into easy going. In an hour Lucy was ten miles or more from home, and farther down in the valley than she had ever been. In fact, she had never before been down the long slope to the valley floor. How changed the horizon became! The monuments loomed up now, dark, sentinel-like, and strange.
Another Indiana paper thus voiced the changing sentiment: "The fact is, that like the advance agent of any great reform especially if a woman Susan B. Anthony has been so belied and maligned by the press in years gone by that many who do not stop to think had come to believe her a perfect ogre, a cross-grained, incongruous old maid whom nobody could like, when the truth of the matter is, one has but to look at and listen to her, either in public or private, to realize that she is a pure, generous, deep-thinking, womanly woman.
"It's because if I let myself get cross-grained and ugly now, p'r'aps someone else some day will be cross-grained and ugly too. And I should never forgive myself for that. I should always feel it was my fault. Fancy if it turned out a shrew like me, Bertie! Wouldn't wouldn't it be dreadful?" She was half-laughing, half-crying, as she whispered the words.
He throws off his cloak, takes a crucifix with one hand, places the other over the head of his daughter, and addresses the devil in such an amusing way that even his wife, always a stupid, dull, cross-grained old woman, had to laugh till the tears came down her cheeks. The two performers in the comedy alone were not laughing, and their serious countenance added to the fun of the performance.
"That you do, grannie! But you see," she added, somewhat inconsequently, "we ain't got no child, and Dick he take it ill of me, and don't care to save his money; so he never takes me out nowheres, and I do be so tired o' stopping indoors, every day and all day long, that it turns me sour, I do believe. I didn't use to be cross-grained, miss. But, laws!
The Life of WILLIAM BOURN, a Notorious Thief As the want of education, from a multitude of instances, seems to be the chief cause of many of those misfortunes which befall persons in the ordinary course of life, so there are some born with such a natural inaptitude thereto, that no care, no pains, is able to conquer the stubborn stupidity of their nature, but like a knotty piece of wood, they defy the ingenuity of others to frame anything useful out of such cross-grained materials.
"The dogs seem to be disobedient," remarked Amos Parr, as his comrade sat down; "they'd be the better of a taste o' Meetuck's cat, I think." "It's truth ye're sayin'," replied O'Riley, commencing a violent assault on a walrus-steak; "they don't obey orders at all, at all. An' Dumps, the blaggard, is as cross-grained as me grandmother's owld pig "
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