When they sat down on the grass with Captain curled at their feet, Soot solemnly listening on a tree and Nut and Shell
nosing about close to them, it seemed to Mary that it would be scarcely bearable to leave such delightfulness, but when she began to tell her story somehow the look in Dickon's funny face gradually changed her mind.
He seemed continually to be searching for someone, and during the first days of the return voyage from the island he was often discovered
nosing about in various parts of the ship; but after he had seen and examined each face of the ship's company, and explored every corner of the vessel he lapsed into utter indifference of all about him.
Yet, with it all, she was a wild thing, alert, suspicious of the lasso,
nosing it in every man's hand, more curious about it than about aught else in the world; her quivering delight was to see it cast for her, her game to elude it; so mettlesome was she that she loved it to be cast fair that she might escape as it was closing round her; she scorned, however her heart might be beating, to run from her pursuers; she took only the one step backward, which still left her near them but always out of reach; her head on high now, but her face as friendly, her manner as gracious as before, she is yours for the catching.
Then the drifting shadow of a huge butterfly attracted his attention, and soon he was
nosing through the jungle on the trail of a wood-rat.
They came quite close to me, rubbing their muzzles against my body and
nosing for the bits of food it was always my practice to reward them with.
This huge fellow roamed restlessly about,
nosing among his companion and the abhorrent litter of the cave.
We will meet even a worse reception if we go
nosing around a British port--mines, nets and all of it.
The hollows under fallen trees seemed to attract her, and she spent much time
nosing about among the larger snow-piled crevices in the rocks and in the caves of overhanging banks.
A dozen times, Perrault,
nosing the way broke through the ice bridges, being saved by the long pole he carried, which he so held that it fell each time across the hole made by his body.
Lucy, after a while, was in gay spirits, owing, I think, to some dear cows who came
nosing towards us in a field close to the lighthouse, and frightened the wits out of us.
The hours struck clear in the cabin; the
nosing bows slapped and scuffled with the seas; the fo'c'sle stovepipe hissed and sputtered as the spray caught it; and the boys slept on, while Disko, Long Jack, Tom Plait, and Uncle Salters, each in turn, stumped aft to look at the wheel, forward to see that the anchor held, or to veer out a little more cable against chafing, with a glance at the dim anchor-light between each round.
Then,
nosing above the kill, he heard Tha coming down from the woods of the North, and presently the voice of the First of the Elephants, which is the voice that we hear now "