While, in his eyes, she differed in no way in her relation to him from any woman, to whom a man, placed as he was, longs to say that she is what he wants most of all mortal things, but stickles in the telling of it, from sheer cowardice; who dares not risk the loss of what share he has in her in the attempt to get the whole.
"Somehow Good"
William de Morgan
"I'm for deep water on cold days; I shall begin with the stickles up above.
"Tom Brown at Oxford"
Thomas Hughes
But Master stickles assured her that the King's writ often had that effect, and the symptom was a good one.
"Lorna Doone, A Romance of Exmoor"
R. D. Blackmore