章节正文
you gave it yourself. Didn't you give it a name? May I
give it one then? May I call it--let me see--Bonny would
do--may I call it Bonny while I'm here? Oh, do let me!"
"Goodness, I don't care. But where on earth is the sense of
naming a geranium?"
"Oh, I like things to have handles even if they are only
geraniums. It makes them seem more like people. How do you
know but that it hurts a geranium's feelings just to be
called a geranium and nothing else? You wouldn't like to be
called nothing but a woman all the time. Yes, I shall call
it Bonny. I named that cherry-tree outside my bedroom
window this morning. I called it Snow Queen because it was
so white. Of course, it won't always be in blossom, but one
can imagine that it is, can't one?"
"I never in all my life say or heard anything to equal her,"
muttered Marilla, beating a retreat down to the cellar after
potatoes. "She is kind of interesting as Matthew says. I
can feel already that I'm wondering what on earth she'll say
next. She'll be casting a spell over me, too. She's cast
it over Matthew. That look he gave me when he went out said
everything he said or hinted last night over again. I wish
he was like other men and would talk things out. A body
could answer back then and argue him into reason. But
what's to be done with a man who just LOOKS?"
Anne had relapsed into reverie, with her chin in her hands
and her eyes on the sky, when Marilla returned from her
cellarpilgrimage. There Marilla left her until the early
dinner was on the table.
"I suppose I can have the mare and buggy this afternoon,
Matthew?" said Marilla.
Matthew nodded and looked wistfully at Anne. Marilla
intercepted the look and said grimly:
"I'm going to drive over to White Sands and settle this
thing. I'll take Anne with me and Mrs. Spencer will
probably make arrangements to send her back to Nova Scotia
at once. I'll set your tea out for you and I'll be home in
time to milk the cows."
Still Matthew said nothing and Marilla had a sense of having
wasted words and breath. There is nothing more aggravating
than a man who won't talk back--unless it is a woman who won't.
Matthew hitched the sorrel into the buggy in due time and
Marilla and Anne set off. Matthew opened the yard gate for
them and as they drove slowly through, he said, to nobody in
particular as it seemed:
"Little Jerry Buote from the Creek was here this morning,
and I told him I guessed I'd hire him for the summer."
Marilla made no reply, but she hit the unlucky sorrel such a
vicious clip with the whip that the fat mare, unused to such
treatment, whizzed indignantly down the lane at an alarming
pace. Marilla looked back once as the buggy bounced along
and saw that aggravating Matthew leaning over the gate,
looking wistfully after them.
CHAPTER V
Anne's History
"Do you know," said Anne confidentially, "I've made up
my mind to enjoy this drive. It's been my experience that
you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind
firmly that you will. Of course, you must make it up
FIRMLY. I am not going to think about going back to the
asylum while we're having our drive. I'm just going to
think about the drive. Oh, look, there's one little early
wild rose out! Isn't it lovely? Don't you think it must be
glad to be a rose? Wouldn't it be nice if roses could talk?
I'm sure they could tell us such lovely things. And isn't
pink the most bewitching color in the world? I love it, but
I can't wear it. Redheaded people can't wear pink, not
even in imagination. Did you ever know of anybody whose
hair was red when she was young, but got to be another
color when she grew up?"
"No, I don't know as I ever did," said Marilla mercilessly,
"and I shouldn't think it likely to happen in your case either."
Anne sighed.
"Well, that is another hope gone. `My life is a perfect
graveyard of buried hopes.' That's a sentence I read in a
book once, and I say it over to comfort myself whenever
I'm disappointed in anything."
"I don't see where the comforting comes in myself,"
said Marilla.
"Why, because it sounds so nice and romantic, just as if
I were a heroine in a book, you know. I am so fond of
romantic things, and a graveyard full of buried hopes is
about as romantic a thing as one can imagine isn't it? I'm
rather glad I have one. Are we going across the Lake of
Shining Waters today?"
"We're not going over Barry's pond, if that's what you
mean by your Lake of Shining Waters. We're going by the
shore road."
"Shore road sounds nice," said Anne dreamily. "Is it as
nice as it sounds? Just when you said `shore road' I saw it
in a picture in my mind, as quick as that! And White
Sands is a pretty name, too; but I don't like it as well as
Avonlea. Avonlea is a lovely name. It just sounds like
music. How far is it to White Sands?"
"It's five miles; and as you're evidently bent on talking
you might as well talk to some purpose by telling me what
you know about yourself."
"Oh, what I KNOW about myself isn't really worth telling,"
said Anne eagerly. "If you'll only let me tell you
what I IMAGINE about myself you'll think it ever so much
more interesting."
"No, I don't want any of your imaginings. Just you stick
to bald facts. Begin at the beginning. Where were you
born and how old are you?"
"I was eleven last March," said Anne, resigning herself
to bald facts with a little sigh. "And I was born in
Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia. My father's name was Walter
Shirley, and he was a teacher in the Bolingbroke High
School. My mother's name was Bertha Shirley. Aren't
Walter and Bertha lovely names? I'm so glad my parents
had nice names. It would be a real disgrace to have a
father named--well, say Jedediah, wouldn't it?"
"I guess it doesn't matter what a person's name is as
long as he behaves himself," said Marilla, feeling herself
called upon to inculcate a good and useful moral.
"Well, I don't know." Anne looked thoughtful. "I read
in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell
as sweet, but I've never been able to believe it. I don't
believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it was called a thistle
or a skunk cabbage. I suppose my father could have been a
good man even if he had been called Jedediah; but I'm
sure it would have been a cross. Well, my mother was a
teacher in the High school, too, but when she married
father she gave up teaching, of course. A husband was
enough responsibility. Mrs. Thomas said that they were a
pair of babies and as poor as church mice. They went to
live in a weeny-teeny little yellow house in Bolingbroke.
I've never seen that house, but I've imagined it thousands
of times. I think it must have had honeysuckle over the
parlor window and lilacs in the front yard and lilies of the
valley just inside the gate. Yes, and muslin curtains in
all the windows. Muslin curtains give a house such an air.
I was born in that house. Mrs. Thomas said I was the
homeliest baby she ever saw, I was so scrawny and tiny
and nothing but eyes, but that mother thought I was
perfectly beautiful. I should think a mother would be a
better judge than a poor woman who came in to scrub,
wouldn't you? I'm glad she was satisfied with me anyhow,
I would feel so sad if I thought I was a disappointment to
her--because she didn't live very long after that, you see.
She died of fever when I was just three months old. I do
wish she'd lived long enough for me to remember calling
her mother. I think it would be so sweet to say `mother,'
don't you? And father died four days afterwards from
fever too. That left me an orphan and folks were at their
wits' end, so Mrs. Thomas said, what to do with me. You
see, nobody wanted me even then. It seems to be my fate.
Father and mother had both come from places far away
and it was well known they hadn't any relatives living.
Finally Mrs. Thomas said she'd take me, though she was
poor and had a drunken husband. She brought me up by
hand. Do you know if there is anything in being brought
up by hand that ought to make people who are brought up
that way better than other people? Because whenever I
was naughty Mrs. Thomas would ask me how I could be
such a bad girl when she had brought me up by hand--
reproachful-like.
"Mr. and Mrs. Thomas moved away from Bolingbroke
to Marysville, and I lived with them until I was eight
years old. I helped look after the Thomas children--there
were four of them younger than me--and I can tell you
they took a lot of looking after. Then Mr. Thomas was
killed falling under a train and his mother offered to take
Mrs. Thomas and the children, but she didn't want me.
Mrs. Thomas was at HER wits' end, so she said, what to do
with me. Then Mrs. Hammond from up the river came
down and said she'd take me, seeing I was handy with
children, and I went up the river to live with her in a
little clearing among the stumps. It was a very lonesome
place. I'm sure I could never have lived there if I hadn't
had an imagination. Mr. Hammond worked a little sawmill
up there, and Mrs. Hammond had eight children. She had
twins three times. I like babies in moderation, but twins
three times in succession is TOO MUCH. I told Mrs.
Hammond so firmly, when the last pair came. I used to get
so dreadfully tired carrying them about.
"I lived up river with Mrs. Hammond over two years,
and then Mr. Hammond died and Mrs. Hammond broke up
housekeeping. She divided her children among her relatives
and went to the States. I had to go to the asylum at
Hopeton, because nobody would take me. They didn't
want me at the asylum, either; they said they were over-
crowded as it was. But they had to take me and I was
there four months until Mrs. Spencer came."
Anne finished up with another sigh, of relief this time.
Evidently she did not like talking about her experiences in
a world that had not wanted her.
"Did you ever go to school?" demanded Marilla, turning
the sorrel mare down the shore road.
"Not a great deal. I went a little the last year I stayed
with Mrs. Thomas. When I went up river we were so far
from a school that I couldn't walk it in winter and there
was a vacation in summer, so I could only go in the spring
and fall. But of course I went while I was at the asylum.
I can read pretty well and I know ever so many pieces of
poetry off by heart--`The Battle of Hohenlinden' and
`Edinburgh after Flodden,' and `Bingen of the Rhine,' and
lost of the `Lady of the Lake' and most of `The Seasons' by
James Thompson. Don't you just love poetry that gives
you a crinkly feeling up and down your back? There is a
piece in the Fifth Reader--`The Downfall of Poland'--that
is just full of thrills. Of course, I wasn't in the Fifth
give it one then? May I call it--let me see--Bonny would
do--may I call it Bonny while I'm here? Oh, do let me!"
"Goodness, I don't care. But where on earth is the sense of
naming a geranium?"
"Oh, I like things to have handles even if they are only
geraniums. It makes them seem more like people. How do you
know but that it hurts a geranium's feelings just to be
called a geranium and nothing else? You wouldn't like to be
called nothing but a woman all the time. Yes, I shall call
it Bonny. I named that cherry-tree outside my bedroom
window this morning. I called it Snow Queen because it was
so white. Of course, it won't always be in blossom, but one
can imagine that it is, can't one?"
"I never in all my life say or heard anything to equal her,"
muttered Marilla, beating a retreat down to the cellar after
potatoes. "She is kind of interesting as Matthew says. I
can feel already that I'm wondering what on earth she'll say
next. She'll be casting a spell over me, too. She's cast
it over Matthew. That look he gave me when he went out said
everything he said or hinted last night over again. I wish
he was like other men and would talk things out. A body
could answer back then and argue him into reason. But
what's to be done with a man who just LOOKS?"
Anne had relapsed into reverie, with her chin in her hands
and her eyes on the sky, when Marilla returned from her
cellarpilgrimage. There Marilla left her until the early
dinner was on the table.
"I suppose I can have the mare and buggy this afternoon,
Matthew?" said Marilla.
Matthew nodded and looked wistfully at Anne. Marilla
intercepted the look and said grimly:
"I'm going to drive over to White Sands and settle this
thing. I'll take Anne with me and Mrs. Spencer will
probably make arrangements to send her back to Nova Scotia
at once. I'll set your tea out for you and I'll be home in
time to milk the cows."
Still Matthew said nothing and Marilla had a sense of having
wasted words and breath. There is nothing more aggravating
than a man who won't talk back--unless it is a woman who won't.
Matthew hitched the sorrel into the buggy in due time and
Marilla and Anne set off. Matthew opened the yard gate for
them and as they drove slowly through, he said, to nobody in
particular as it seemed:
"Little Jerry Buote from the Creek was here this morning,
and I told him I guessed I'd hire him for the summer."
Marilla made no reply, but she hit the unlucky sorrel such a
vicious clip with the whip that the fat mare, unused to such
treatment, whizzed indignantly down the lane at an alarming
pace. Marilla looked back once as the buggy bounced along
and saw that aggravating Matthew leaning over the gate,
looking wistfully after them.
CHAPTER V
Anne's History
"Do you know," said Anne confidentially, "I've made up
my mind to enjoy this drive. It's been my experience that
you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind
firmly that you will. Of course, you must make it up
FIRMLY. I am not going to think about going back to the
asylum while we're having our drive. I'm just going to
think about the drive. Oh, look, there's one little early
wild rose out! Isn't it lovely? Don't you think it must be
glad to be a rose? Wouldn't it be nice if roses could talk?
I'm sure they could tell us such lovely things. And isn't
pink the most bewitching color in the world? I love it, but
I can't wear it. Redheaded people can't wear pink, not
even in imagination. Did you ever know of anybody whose
hair was red when she was young, but got to be another
color when she grew up?"
"No, I don't know as I ever did," said Marilla mercilessly,
"and I shouldn't think it likely to happen in your case either."
Anne sighed.
"Well, that is another hope gone. `My life is a perfect
graveyard of buried hopes.' That's a sentence I read in a
book once, and I say it over to comfort myself whenever
I'm disappointed in anything."
"I don't see where the comforting comes in myself,"
said Marilla.
"Why, because it sounds so nice and romantic, just as if
I were a heroine in a book, you know. I am so fond of
romantic things, and a graveyard full of buried hopes is
about as romantic a thing as one can imagine isn't it? I'm
rather glad I have one. Are we going across the Lake of
Shining Waters today?"
"We're not going over Barry's pond, if that's what you
mean by your Lake of Shining Waters. We're going by the
shore road."
"Shore road sounds nice," said Anne dreamily. "Is it as
nice as it sounds? Just when you said `shore road' I saw it
in a picture in my mind, as quick as that! And White
Sands is a pretty name, too; but I don't like it as well as
Avonlea. Avonlea is a lovely name. It just sounds like
music. How far is it to White Sands?"
"It's five miles; and as you're evidently bent on talking
you might as well talk to some purpose by telling me what
you know about yourself."
"Oh, what I KNOW about myself isn't really worth telling,"
said Anne eagerly. "If you'll only let me tell you
what I IMAGINE about myself you'll think it ever so much
more interesting."
"No, I don't want any of your imaginings. Just you stick
to bald facts. Begin at the beginning. Where were you
born and how old are you?"
"I was eleven last March," said Anne, resigning herself
to bald facts with a little sigh. "And I was born in
Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia. My father's name was Walter
Shirley, and he was a teacher in the Bolingbroke High
School. My mother's name was Bertha Shirley. Aren't
Walter and Bertha lovely names? I'm so glad my parents
had nice names. It would be a real disgrace to have a
father named--well, say Jedediah, wouldn't it?"
"I guess it doesn't matter what a person's name is as
long as he behaves himself," said Marilla, feeling herself
called upon to inculcate a good and useful moral.
"Well, I don't know." Anne looked thoughtful. "I read
in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell
as sweet, but I've never been able to believe it. I don't
believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it was called a thistle
or a skunk cabbage. I suppose my father could have been a
good man even if he had been called Jedediah; but I'm
sure it would have been a cross. Well, my mother was a
teacher in the High school, too, but when she married
father she gave up teaching, of course. A husband was
enough responsibility. Mrs. Thomas said that they were a
pair of babies and as poor as church mice. They went to
live in a weeny-teeny little yellow house in Bolingbroke.
I've never seen that house, but I've imagined it thousands
of times. I think it must have had honeysuckle over the
parlor window and lilacs in the front yard and lilies of the
valley just inside the gate. Yes, and muslin curtains in
all the windows. Muslin curtains give a house such an air.
I was born in that house. Mrs. Thomas said I was the
homeliest baby she ever saw, I was so scrawny and tiny
and nothing but eyes, but that mother thought I was
perfectly beautiful. I should think a mother would be a
better judge than a poor woman who came in to scrub,
wouldn't you? I'm glad she was satisfied with me anyhow,
I would feel so sad if I thought I was a disappointment to
her--because she didn't live very long after that, you see.
She died of fever when I was just three months old. I do
wish she'd lived long enough for me to remember calling
her mother. I think it would be so sweet to say `mother,'
don't you? And father died four days afterwards from
fever too. That left me an orphan and folks were at their
wits' end, so Mrs. Thomas said, what to do with me. You
see, nobody wanted me even then. It seems to be my fate.
Father and mother had both come from places far away
and it was well known they hadn't any relatives living.
Finally Mrs. Thomas said she'd take me, though she was
poor and had a drunken husband. She brought me up by
hand. Do you know if there is anything in being brought
up by hand that ought to make people who are brought up
that way better than other people? Because whenever I
was naughty Mrs. Thomas would ask me how I could be
such a bad girl when she had brought me up by hand--
reproachful-like.
"Mr. and Mrs. Thomas moved away from Bolingbroke
to Marysville, and I lived with them until I was eight
years old. I helped look after the Thomas children--there
were four of them younger than me--and I can tell you
they took a lot of looking after. Then Mr. Thomas was
killed falling under a train and his mother offered to take
Mrs. Thomas and the children, but she didn't want me.
Mrs. Thomas was at HER wits' end, so she said, what to do
with me. Then Mrs. Hammond from up the river came
down and said she'd take me, seeing I was handy with
children, and I went up the river to live with her in a
little clearing among the stumps. It was a very lonesome
place. I'm sure I could never have lived there if I hadn't
had an imagination. Mr. Hammond worked a little sawmill
up there, and Mrs. Hammond had eight children. She had
twins three times. I like babies in moderation, but twins
three times in succession is TOO MUCH. I told Mrs.
Hammond so firmly, when the last pair came. I used to get
so dreadfully tired carrying them about.
"I lived up river with Mrs. Hammond over two years,
and then Mr. Hammond died and Mrs. Hammond broke up
housekeeping. She divided her children among her relatives
and went to the States. I had to go to the asylum at
Hopeton, because nobody would take me. They didn't
want me at the asylum, either; they said they were over-
crowded as it was. But they had to take me and I was
there four months until Mrs. Spencer came."
Anne finished up with another sigh, of relief this time.
Evidently she did not like talking about her experiences in
a world that had not wanted her.
"Did you ever go to school?" demanded Marilla, turning
the sorrel mare down the shore road.
"Not a great deal. I went a little the last year I stayed
with Mrs. Thomas. When I went up river we were so far
from a school that I couldn't walk it in winter and there
was a vacation in summer, so I could only go in the spring
and fall. But of course I went while I was at the asylum.
I can read pretty well and I know ever so many pieces of
poetry off by heart--`The Battle of Hohenlinden' and
`Edinburgh after Flodden,' and `Bingen of the Rhine,' and
lost of the `Lady of the Lake' and most of `The Seasons' by
James Thompson. Don't you just love poetry that gives
you a crinkly feeling up and down your back? There is a
piece in the Fifth Reader--`The Downfall of Poland'--that
is just full of thrills. Of course, I wasn't in the Fifth
- blossom [´blɔsəm]
n.花；开花期 vi.开花 (初中英语单词) - retreat [ri´tri:t] v.&n.退却；撤退；放弃 (初中英语单词)
- cellar [´selə] n.地窑，地下室 (初中英语单词)
- breath [breθ] n.呼吸；气息 (初中英语单词)
- imagination [i,mædʒi´neiʃən] n.想象(力) (初中英语单词)
- sentence [´sentəns] n.判决 vt.宣判；处刑 (初中英语单词)
- romantic [rəu´mæntik] a.传奇(式)的；浪漫的 (初中英语单词)
- evidently [´evidəntli] ad.明显地 (初中英语单词)
- eagerly [´i:gəli] ad.渴望地，急切地 (初中英语单词)
- beginning [bi´giniŋ] n.开始，开端；起源 (初中英语单词)
- disgrace [dis´greis] n.耻辱 vt.玷辱；贬黜 (初中英语单词)
- cabbage [´kæbidʒ] n.卷心菜；洋白菜 (初中英语单词)
- responsibility [ri,spɔnsə´biliti] n.责任(心)；职责；任务 (初中英语单词)
- disappointment [,disə´pɔintmənt] n.失望；挫折 (初中英语单词)
- drunken [´drʌŋkən] a.喝醉的；常醉的 (初中英语单词)
- whenever [wen´evə] conj.&ad.无论何时 (初中英语单词)
- succession [sək´seʃən] n.继任；继承(权) (初中英语单词)
- firmly [´fə:mli] ad.坚固地，稳定地 (初中英语单词)
- dreadfully [dredfuli] ad.可怕地；糟透地 (初中英语单词)
- relief [ri´li:f] n.救济；援救；减轻 (初中英语单词)
- vacation [və´keiʃən, vei´keiʃən] n.假期；休庭期；腾空 (初中英语单词)
- poetry [´pəuitri] n.诗；诗意 (初中英语单词)
- thoughtful [´θɔ:tfəl] a.深思的；体贴的 (高中英语单词)
- orphan [´ɔ:fən] n.&a.孤儿 vt.使成孤儿 (高中英语单词)
- naughty [´nɔ:ti] a.顽皮的；下流的 (高中英语单词)
- seeing [si:iŋ] see的现在分词 n.视觉 (高中英语单词)
- pilgrimage [´pilgrimidʒ] n.朝圣；远游；人生历程 (英语四级单词)
- unlucky [ʌn´lʌki] a.倒霉的，不幸的 (英语四级单词)
- heroine [´herəuin] n.女英雄；女主人公 (英语四级单词)
- muslin [´mʌzlin] n.平纹细布，薄纱织物 (英语四级单词)
- clearing [´kliəriŋ] n.(森林中的)空旷地 (英语四级单词)
- moderation [,mɔdə´reiʃən] n.适度；温和；节制 (英语四级单词)
- geranium [dʒə´reiniəm] n.天竺葵 (英语六级单词)
- beating [´bi:tiŋ] n.敲；搅打；失败 (英语六级单词)
- wistfully [´wistfuli] ad.渴望地；不满足地 (英语六级单词)
- spencer [´spensə] n.(羊毛)短上衣 (英语六级单词)
- unused [,ʌn´ju:zd] a.不用的；未消耗的 (英语六级单词)
- indignantly [in´dignəntli] ad.愤慨地，义愤地 (英语六级单词)
- honeysuckle [´hʌni,sʌkəl] n.忍冬，金银花 (英语六级单词)
- asylum [ə´sailəm] n.避难所，收容所 (英语六级单词)
- downfall [´daunfɔ:l] n.落下；垮台 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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