With a pretty impulse she held out her right hand, half grave, half playful.
"Lonesome Land"
B. M. Bower
Many of these almost unconscious reckonings took the form of playful impressions, and were not even at the time written down.
"My Attainment of the Pole"
Frederick A. Cook
Changing the metaphor, she speaks of herself as a peak, which Monaldeschi has chosen to scale, and which he wrongly hoped to descend when he should be weary of the position, by the same ladder by which he climbed; and her half-playful words assume a still more sinister import, as she depicts the whirling waters, the frightful rocky abyss, into which a moment's giddiness on his part, a touch from her, might precipitate him.
"A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.)"
Mrs. Sutherland Orr