knocking about

“And as a matter of fact, this part of things always did bore her, in books and movies and the like — the part where the villain paraded his or her superior might and boasted about his or her plans, showed off whatever Doomsday Machine might be knocking about the shop, and attempted to impress the onlookers with a sense of their vast futility and unimportance.”

The Warslayer

“I remember one evening (it was fair-time in Sacramento, and we were knocking about and having a good time) when I lost my hat in a fight.”

Road-Kids and Gay-Cats

“Many months, maybe even years, I passed in knocking about from village to village, from town to town, till, at last, I came into the joint possession of a certain Peter Semionovich Khlopov and his wife Anna Petrovna.”

In Those Days

“A marquis, with wonderful canions and a scented wig like an edifice, told me it is by an upholsterer named Coquelin, a barnstormer who ran away from home and has been knocking about the provinces unsuccessfully for nearly twenty years: and my little”

The Cream of the Jest: A Comedy of Evasions