The white figure sprang up, let the yawl swing with flapping sails into the wind, and then in thirty active seconds had lowered and roughly stowed mainsail, jib and foresail.
— from Madame Gilbert's Cannibal by Bennet Copplestone

Now she sat crying all evening with this one on her lap; she gave up her daily walk to the Berlin wool shop, with all its romantic possibilities; at the clatter of the tea-things she would start apprehensively; she had let a red shawl lie for two days in the blue-and-white room.
— from Sentimental Tommy The Story of His Boyhood by J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie

Valerie had taken him by the shoulders and shaken him like a rat: she had hurled at his head an unending stream of questions—all about Lyveden, and, when he had hesitated, had shaken him again; when he had tried to protest, she had put her hand over his mouth; when she had clearly exhausted his memory, she had announced that they would go up to Town the next day, and that on Sunday morning, sun, rain, or snow, he would motor her down to where Lyveden dwelt; then she had said she was sorry she'd shaken him, smiled him a maddening smile, told him, with a rare blush, that Anthony Lyveden was "the most wonderful man in the world," kissed him between the eyes, and then darted out of the room, calling for Lady Touchstone….
— from Anthony Lyveden by Dornford Yates

And Briggs and Travers major and Travers minor and Saunders and Hopwood abandoned the pursuit, so to say; while I and Rice and a chap called Mitchell, all ably assisted by Milly Dunston, continued in our great attempt to wake Fortescue to the call of his country and storm his lines, as Rice said.
— from The Human Boy and the War by Eden Phillpotts