And there were his friends: the humorous, genial, deboshed, yet ever-kindly Phineas; dear old Mo Shendish, whose material feet were hankering after the vulgar pavement of Mare Street, Hackney, but whose spiritual tread rang on golden floors dimly imagined by the Seer of Patmos; Barrett, the D. C. M., the miniature Hercules, who, according to legend, though, modestly, he would never own to it, seized two Boches by the neck and knocked their heads together till they died, and who, musically inclined, would sit at his, Doggie's, feet while he played on his penny whistle all the sentimental tunes he had ever heard of; Sergeant Ballinghall, a tower of a man, a champion amateur heavy-weight boxer, with a voice compared with which a megaphone sounded like a maiden's prayer, and a Bardolphian nose and an eagle eye and the heart of a broody hen, who had not only given him boxing lessons, but had pulled him through difficult places innumerable ...
"The Rough Road"
William John Locke
She was one of those inevitable mothers with little broody household ways that no immense wealth could dissipate.
"Star-Dust A Story of an American Girl"
Fannie Hurst
In this way Clare persistently wooed her in undertones like that of the purling milk-at the cow's side, at skimmings, at butter-makings, at cheese-makings, among broody poultry, and among farrowing pigs-as no milkmaid was ever wooed before by such a man.
"Tess of the d'Urbervilles A Pure Woman"
Thomas Hardy
