But her prettiness was what he had noticed first, and all the other things had come afterward: cruelty, meanness, self-will.

There was an artificial lake just out of sight in the first stand of trees, fed by a half dozen springs that popped out of the ground above the hillside orchard.

The first part of the road was steep, but it leveled off after the second bend and curled gradually into the valley.

No one was behind it, but in the rear wall of the office I noticed, for the first time, a door which had been left partially open.

The herd was watered and then thrown onto a broad grass flat which was to be the first night's bedground.

Once again, Tom Horn was the first and most likely suspect, and he was brought in for questioning immediately.

For Matilda, it was the first she had known in many a night.

Even the knowledge that she was losing another boy, as a mother always does when a marriage is made, did not prevent her from having the first carefree, dreamless sleep that she had known since they dropped down the canyon and into Bear Valley, way, way back there when they were crossing those other mountains.

Stevens was grunting over the last empty pocket when Russ abruptly rose and lunged toward Carmer's hat, which had tumbled half-a-dozen feet away when he first fell.

The Indian's arm whipped sidewise -- there was a flash of amber and froth, the crash of the bottle shattering against the side of the first car.

It was her first smile.

At first, I thought he was out of his head, talking wildly like this.

Hell, I gave him the first decent job he ever had, six, seven -- how many years ago was it, Rob ''??

Miss Langford ( her first name was Evelyn ) was an attractive girl.

School began in August, the hottest part of the year, and for the first few days Miss Langford was very lenient with the children, letting them play a lot and the new ones sort of get acquainted with one another.

It was just as well that the ignorant Dandy enjoyed himself to the hilt that first evening, for the room was to become his prison cell.

`` Bastards '', he would say, `` all I did was put a beat to that Vivaldi stuff, and the first chair clobbered me ''!!

In 1961 the first important legislative victory of the Kennedy Administration came when the principle of national responsibility for local economic distress won out over a `` state's-responsibility '' proposal -- provision was made for payment for unemployment relief by nation-wide taxation rather than by a levy only on those states afflicted with manpower surplus.

The first systematic thinking about this Pandora's box within Pandora's boxes was done four years ago by Fred Ikle, a frail, meek-mannered Swiss-born sociologist.

The smell at first was more surprising than unpleasant.

His collaboration with Washington, begun when he was the general's aide during the Revolution, was resumed when he entered the first Cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury.

It was the night Clayton had tricked them in the poker game.

It was strictly the deputy's game, but McBride had gone too far to throw in.

And while he was ever alert for game, and most particularly a tiger, Penny marvelled at the Eden they were traversing.

even when the fences became a part of the game -- when a vine-embowered gate-post was the Sleeping Beauty's enchanted castle, or when Rapunzel let down her golden hair from beneath the crocketed spire, even then we paid little heed to those who went by on the path outside.

One evening, while a volley-ball game was being played in the yard among the prisoners remaining there, a simulated melee was staged -- just as the gates were opened to admit other prisoners returning from work.

the pope was playing a dangerous game, with so many balls in the air at once that a misstep would bring them all about his ears, and his only hope was to temporize so that he could take advantage of every change in the delicate balance of European affairs.

The younger men, Vere, and Pembroke, who was also Edward's cousin and whose Lusignan blood gave him the swarthy complexion that caused Edward of Carnarvon's irreverent friend, Piers Gaveston, to nickname him `` Joseph the Jew '', were relatively new to the game of diplomacy, but Pontissara had been on missions to Rome before, and Hotham, a man of great learning, `` jocund in speech, agreeable to meet, of honest religion, and pleasing in the eyes of all '', and an archbishop to boot, was as reliable and experienced as Othon himself.

To me it was a game, to her it was the deadly seriousness of life.

He kept his attacks on Republicanism for partisan campaigns, but that is part of the game he was born to play.

After all, when one has asked whatever became of old Joe and Charlie when one has inquired who it was Sue Brown married and where it is they now live when questions are asked and answered about families and children, and old professors when the game and its probable outcome has been exhausted that does it.

Enough of his life was spent there on the field for him never to like watching the game as a spectator in the crowd.

It was rather a childish game, all in all, but everybody seemed to be getting into the spirit of the thing and he could not remember when he had enjoyed planning anything quite so much.

`` Bull tailin' '' was a game once pop'lar with the Mexican cowboys of Texas.

( In the graveyard at Nairobi he had been shown the graves of thirty-four big game hunters killed hunting the animals he was attempting to lasso.

This was a bitterly fought game, carrying almost as much grudge as a fist fight, with no friendliness exhibited between the teams except the formal politeness that accompanied the setting forth of ground rules and agreements on balls that went into the crowd.

Every pitch in the game brought forth a howl from the enraptured audience and every fly ball the visitors dropped ( and because their right fielder was still a little fuzzy from drink, they dropped many ) called forth yelps of derision.

At one point in the game when the skinny old man in suspenders who was acting as umpire got in the way of a thrown ball and took it painfully in the kidneys, he lay there unattended while players and spectators wrangled over whether the ball was `` dead '' or the base runners were free to score.

Baseball was surely the national game in those days, even though professional baseball may have been merely a business.

Even a city of thirty thousand might have six baseball teams, sponsored by grocers and hardware merchants or department stores, that played two or three times a week throughout the summer, usually in the cool of the evening, before an earnest and partisan audience who did not begrudge a quarter each, or even more, to be dropped into a hat when the game was half over.

Ruth was a delinquent boy still, but he was in every way a great ball player who was out to win the game and occasionally risked a cracked bone to do it.