finicking

This Wang Lung said in some reproach to the wife of his eldest son, for she would not suffer the poor fool near her, but was finicking and squeamish and she said, “Such an one should not be alive at all, and it is enough to mar the child in me to look at her.”

Then the cousin laughed coarsely and he said to Lotus, who sat there smoking her water pipe, “These town women are too finicking, are they not, Old Mistress?”

Nothing was done well, or as it ought to be done; but then, as the girl said, Mrs. Marks was so finicking, there was no pleasing her, she should be glad enough when she was able to do the work for herself, and she could go home to her mother.

Yes, Andy was on the whole the happiest—happier even than Harry, to whom content, triumph, and challenge were all too habitual; happier even than Vivien, who had still some schooling to endure, still some of love's finicking doubts, some of hope's artificially prudent incredulity, to overcome; beyond doubt happier than Wellgood, who had lost two pounds, or Isobel Vintry, who had challenged and had been told that her challenge should be taken up—some day!

To Diana he was as a stranger, with no laugh in the glittering blue eyes, and none of the almost finicking politeness that usually characterised his bearing.