章节正文
apologetic about it. It seems they thought I ate too
much raspberry trifle at lunch, and they said Claude
never eats too much raspberry trifle. Well, Claude
always goes to sleep for half an hour after lunch,
because he's told to, and I waited till he was asleep,
and tied his hands and started forcible feeding with a
whole bucketful of raspberry trifle that they were
keeping for the garden-party. Lots of it went on to his
sailor-suit and some of it on to the bed, but a good deal
went down Claude's throat, and they can't say again that
he has never been known to eat too much raspberry trifle.
That is why I am not allowed to go to the party, and as
an additionalpunishment I must speak French all the
afternoon. I've had to tell you all this in English, as
there were words like `forcible feeding' that I didn't
know the French for; of course I could have invented
them, but if I had said NOURRITURE OBLIGATOIRE you
wouldn't have had the least idea what I was talking
about. MAIS MAINTENANT, NOUS PARLONS FRANCAIS."
"Oh, very well, TRES BIEN," said Mrs. Stossen
reluctantly; in moments of flurry such French as she knew
was not under very good control. "LA, A L'AUTRE COTE DE
LA PORTE, EST UN COCHON - "
"UN COCHON? AH, LE PETIT CHARMANT!" exclaimed
Matilda with enthusiasm.
"MAIS NON, PAS DU TOUT PETIT, ET PAS DU TOUT
CHARMANT; UN BETE FEROCE - "
"UNE BETE," corrected Matilda; "a pig is masculine
as long as you call it a pig, but if you lose your temper
with it and call it a ferocious beast it becomes one of
us at once. French is a dreadfully unsexing language."
"For goodness' sake let us talk English then," said
Mrs. Stossen. "Is there any way out of this garden
except through the paddock where the pig is?"
"I always go over the wall, by way of the plum
tree," said Matilda.
"Dressed as we are we could hardly do that," said
Mrs. Stossen; it was difficult to imagine her doing it in
any costume.
"Do you think you could go and get some one who
would drive the pig away?" asked Miss Stossen.
"I promised my aunt I would stay here till five
o'clock; it's not four yet."
"I am sure, under the circumstances, your aunt would
permit - "
"My conscience would not permit," said Matilda with
cold dignity.
"We can't stay here till five o'clock," exclaimed
Mrs. Stossen with growing exasperation.
"Shall I recite to you to make the time pass
quicker?" asked Matilda obligingly. " `Belinda, the
little Breadwinner,' is considered my best piece, or,
perhaps, it ought to be something in French. Henri
Quatre's address to his soldiers is the only thing I
really know in that language."
"If you will go and fetch some one to drive that
animal away I will give you something to buy yourself a
nice present," said Mrs. Stossen.
Matilda came several inches lower down the medlar
tree.
"That is the most practical suggestion you have made
yet for getting out of the garden," she remarked
cheerfully; "Claude and I are collecting money for the
Children's Fresh Air Fund, and we are seeing which of us
can collect the biggest sum."
"I shall be very glad to contribute half a crown,
very glad indeed," said Mrs. Stossen, digging that coin
out of the depths of a receptacle which formed a detached
outwork of her toilet.
"Claude is a long way ahead of me at present,"
continued Matilda, taking no notice of the suggested
offering; "you see, he's only eleven, and has golden
hair, and those are enormous advantages when you're on
the collecting job. Only the other day a Russian lady
gave him ten shillings. Russians understand the art of
giving far better than we do. I expect Claude will net
quite twenty-five shillings this afternoon; he'll have
the field to himself, and he'll be able to do the pale,
fragile, not-long-for-this-world business to perfection
after his raspberry trifle experience. Yes, he'll be
QUITE two pounds ahead of me by now."
With much probing and plucking and many regretful
murmurs the beleaguered ladies managed to produce seven-
and-sixpence between them.
"I am afraid this is all we've got," said Mrs.
Stossen.
Matilda showed no sign of coming down either to the
earth or to their figure.
"I could not do violence to my conscience for
anything less than ten shillings," she announced stiffly.
Mother and daughter muttered certain remarks under
their breath, in which the word "beast" was prominent,
and probably had no reference to Tarquin.
"I find I HAVE got another half-crown," said Mrs.
Stossen in a shaking voice; "here you are. Now please
fetch some one quickly."
Matilda slipped down from the tree, took possession
of the donation, and proceeded to pick up a handful of
over-ripe medlars from the grass at her feet. Then she
climbed over the gate and addressed herself
affectionately to the boar-pig.
"Come, Tarquin, dear old boy; you know you can't
resist medlars when they're rotten and squashy."
Tarquin couldn't. By dint of throwing the fruit in
front of him at judicious intervals Matilda decoyed him
back to his stye, while the delivered captives hurried
across the paddock.
"Well, I never! The little minx!" exclaimed Mrs.
Stossen when she was safely on the high road. "The
animal wasn't savage at all, and as for the ten
shillings, I don't believe the Fresh Air Fund will see a
penny of it!"
There she was unwarrantably harsh in her judgment.
If you examine the books of the fund you will find the
acknowledgment: "Collected by Miss Matilda Cuvering, 2s.
6d."
THE BROGUE
THE hunting season had come to an end, and the
Mullets had not succeeded in selling the Brogue. There
had been a kind of tradition in the family for the past
three or four years, a sort of fatalistic hope, that the
Brogue would find a purchaser before the hunting was
over; but seasons came and went without anything
happening to justify such ill-founded optimism. The
animal had been named Berserker in the earlier stages of
its career; it had been rechristened the Brogue later on,
in recognition of the fact that, once acquired, it was
extremely difficult to get rid of. The unkinder wits of
the neighbourhood had been known to suggest that the
first letter of its name was superfluous. The Brogue had
been variously described in sale catalogues as a light-
weight hunter, a lady's hack, and, more simply, but still
with a touch of imagination, as a useful brown gelding,
standing 15.1. Toby Mullet had ridden him for four
seasons with the West Wessex; you can ride almost any
sort of horse with the West Wessex as long as it is an
animal that knows the country. The Brogue knew the
country intimately, having personally created most of the
gaps that were to be met with in banks and hedges for
many miles round. His manners and characteristics were
not ideal in the hunting field, but he was probably
rather safer to ride to hounds than he was as a hack on
country roads. According to the Mullet family, he was
not really road-shy, but there were one or two objects of
dislike that brought on sudden attacks of what Toby
called the swerving sickness. Motors and cycles he
treated with tolerantdisregard, but pigs, wheelbarrows,
piles of stones by the roadside, perambulators in a
village street, gates painted too aggressively white, and
sometimes, but not always, the newer kind of beehives,
turned him aside from his tracks in vivid imitation of
the zigzag course of forked lightning. If a pheasant
rose noisily from the other side of a hedgerow the Brogue
would spring into the air at the same moment, but this
may have been due to a desire to be companionable. The
Mullet family contradicted the widely prevalent report
that the horse was a confirmed crib-biter.
It was about the third week in May that Mrs. Mullet,
relict of the late Sylvester Mullet, and mother of Toby
and a bunch of daughters, assailed Clovis Sangrail on the
outskirts of the village with a breathless catalogue of
local happenings.
"You know our new neighbour, Mr. Penricarde?" she
vociferated; "awfully rich, owns tin mines in Cornwall,
middle-aged and rather quiet. He's taken the Red House
on a long lease and spent a lot of money on alterations
and improvements. Well, Toby's sold him the Brogue!"
Clovis spent a moment or two in assimilating the
astonishing news; then he broke out into unstinted
congratulation. If he had belonged to a more emotional
race he would probably have kissed Mrs. Mullet.
"How wonderfully lucky to have pulled it off at
last! Now you can buy a decent animal. I've always said
that Toby was clever. Ever so many congratulations."
"Don't congratulate me. It's the most unfortunate
thing that could have happened!" said Mrs. Mullet
dramatically.
Clovis stared at her in amazement.
"Mr. Penricarde," said Mrs. Mullet, sinking her
voice to what she imagined to be an impressive whisper,
though it rather resembled a hoarse, excited squeak, "Mr.
Penricarde has just begun to pay attentions to Jessie.
Slight at first, but now unmistakable. I was a fool not
to have seen it sooner. Yesterday, at the Rectory garden
party, he asked her what her favourite flowers were, and
she told him carnations, and to-day a whole stack of
carnations has arrived, clove and malmaison and lovely
dark red ones, regular exhibition blooms, and a box of
chocolates that he must have got on purpose from London.
And he's asked her to go round the links with him to-
morrow. And now, just at this critical moment, Toby has
sold him that animal. It's a calamity!"
"But you've been trying to get the horse off your
hands for years," said Clovis.
"I've got a houseful of daughters," said Mrs.
Mullet, "and I've been trying - well, not to get them off
my hands, of course, but a husband or two wouldn't be
amiss among the lot of them; there are six of them, you
know."
"I don't know," said Clovis, "I've never counted,
but I expect you're right as to the number; mothers
much raspberry trifle at lunch, and they said Claude
never eats too much raspberry trifle. Well, Claude
always goes to sleep for half an hour after lunch,
because he's told to, and I waited till he was asleep,
and tied his hands and started forcible feeding with a
whole bucketful of raspberry trifle that they were
keeping for the garden-party. Lots of it went on to his
sailor-suit and some of it on to the bed, but a good deal
went down Claude's throat, and they can't say again that
he has never been known to eat too much raspberry trifle.
That is why I am not allowed to go to the party, and as
an additionalpunishment I must speak French all the
afternoon. I've had to tell you all this in English, as
there were words like `forcible feeding' that I didn't
know the French for; of course I could have invented
them, but if I had said NOURRITURE OBLIGATOIRE you
wouldn't have had the least idea what I was talking
about. MAIS MAINTENANT, NOUS PARLONS FRANCAIS."
"Oh, very well, TRES BIEN," said Mrs. Stossen
reluctantly; in moments of flurry such French as she knew
was not under very good control. "LA, A L'AUTRE COTE DE
LA PORTE, EST UN COCHON - "
"UN COCHON? AH, LE PETIT CHARMANT!" exclaimed
Matilda with enthusiasm.
"MAIS NON, PAS DU TOUT PETIT, ET PAS DU TOUT
CHARMANT; UN BETE FEROCE - "
"UNE BETE," corrected Matilda; "a pig is masculine
as long as you call it a pig, but if you lose your temper
with it and call it a ferocious beast it becomes one of
us at once. French is a dreadfully unsexing language."
"For goodness' sake let us talk English then," said
Mrs. Stossen. "Is there any way out of this garden
except through the paddock where the pig is?"
"I always go over the wall, by way of the plum
tree," said Matilda.
"Dressed as we are we could hardly do that," said
Mrs. Stossen; it was difficult to imagine her doing it in
any costume.
"Do you think you could go and get some one who
would drive the pig away?" asked Miss Stossen.
"I promised my aunt I would stay here till five
o'clock; it's not four yet."
"I am sure, under the circumstances, your aunt would
permit - "
"My conscience would not permit," said Matilda with
cold dignity.
"We can't stay here till five o'clock," exclaimed
Mrs. Stossen with growing exasperation.
"Shall I recite to you to make the time pass
quicker?" asked Matilda obligingly. " `Belinda, the
little Breadwinner,' is considered my best piece, or,
perhaps, it ought to be something in French. Henri
Quatre's address to his soldiers is the only thing I
really know in that language."
"If you will go and fetch some one to drive that
animal away I will give you something to buy yourself a
nice present," said Mrs. Stossen.
Matilda came several inches lower down the medlar
tree.
"That is the most practical suggestion you have made
yet for getting out of the garden," she remarked
cheerfully; "Claude and I are collecting money for the
Children's Fresh Air Fund, and we are seeing which of us
can collect the biggest sum."
"I shall be very glad to contribute half a crown,
very glad indeed," said Mrs. Stossen, digging that coin
out of the depths of a receptacle which formed a detached
outwork of her toilet.
"Claude is a long way ahead of me at present,"
continued Matilda, taking no notice of the suggested
offering; "you see, he's only eleven, and has golden
hair, and those are enormous advantages when you're on
the collecting job. Only the other day a Russian lady
gave him ten shillings. Russians understand the art of
giving far better than we do. I expect Claude will net
quite twenty-five shillings this afternoon; he'll have
the field to himself, and he'll be able to do the pale,
fragile, not-long-for-this-world business to perfection
after his raspberry trifle experience. Yes, he'll be
QUITE two pounds ahead of me by now."
With much probing and plucking and many regretful
murmurs the beleaguered ladies managed to produce seven-
and-sixpence between them.
"I am afraid this is all we've got," said Mrs.
Stossen.
Matilda showed no sign of coming down either to the
earth or to their figure.
"I could not do violence to my conscience for
anything less than ten shillings," she announced stiffly.
Mother and daughter muttered certain remarks under
their breath, in which the word "beast" was prominent,
and probably had no reference to Tarquin.
"I find I HAVE got another half-crown," said Mrs.
Stossen in a shaking voice; "here you are. Now please
fetch some one quickly."
Matilda slipped down from the tree, took possession
of the donation, and proceeded to pick up a handful of
over-ripe medlars from the grass at her feet. Then she
climbed over the gate and addressed herself
affectionately to the boar-pig.
"Come, Tarquin, dear old boy; you know you can't
resist medlars when they're rotten and squashy."
Tarquin couldn't. By dint of throwing the fruit in
front of him at judicious intervals Matilda decoyed him
back to his stye, while the delivered captives hurried
across the paddock.
"Well, I never! The little minx!" exclaimed Mrs.
Stossen when she was safely on the high road. "The
animal wasn't savage at all, and as for the ten
shillings, I don't believe the Fresh Air Fund will see a
penny of it!"
There she was unwarrantably harsh in her judgment.
If you examine the books of the fund you will find the
acknowledgment: "Collected by Miss Matilda Cuvering, 2s.
6d."
THE BROGUE
THE hunting season had come to an end, and the
Mullets had not succeeded in selling the Brogue. There
had been a kind of tradition in the family for the past
three or four years, a sort of fatalistic hope, that the
Brogue would find a purchaser before the hunting was
over; but seasons came and went without anything
happening to justify such ill-founded optimism. The
animal had been named Berserker in the earlier stages of
its career; it had been rechristened the Brogue later on,
in recognition of the fact that, once acquired, it was
extremely difficult to get rid of. The unkinder wits of
the neighbourhood had been known to suggest that the
first letter of its name was superfluous. The Brogue had
been variously described in sale catalogues as a light-
weight hunter, a lady's hack, and, more simply, but still
with a touch of imagination, as a useful brown gelding,
standing 15.1. Toby Mullet had ridden him for four
seasons with the West Wessex; you can ride almost any
sort of horse with the West Wessex as long as it is an
animal that knows the country. The Brogue knew the
country intimately, having personally created most of the
gaps that were to be met with in banks and hedges for
many miles round. His manners and characteristics were
not ideal in the hunting field, but he was probably
rather safer to ride to hounds than he was as a hack on
country roads. According to the Mullet family, he was
not really road-shy, but there were one or two objects of
dislike that brought on sudden attacks of what Toby
called the swerving sickness. Motors and cycles he
treated with tolerantdisregard, but pigs, wheelbarrows,
piles of stones by the roadside, perambulators in a
village street, gates painted too aggressively white, and
sometimes, but not always, the newer kind of beehives,
turned him aside from his tracks in vivid imitation of
the zigzag course of forked lightning. If a pheasant
rose noisily from the other side of a hedgerow the Brogue
would spring into the air at the same moment, but this
may have been due to a desire to be companionable. The
Mullet family contradicted the widely prevalent report
that the horse was a confirmed crib-biter.
It was about the third week in May that Mrs. Mullet,
relict of the late Sylvester Mullet, and mother of Toby
and a bunch of daughters, assailed Clovis Sangrail on the
outskirts of the village with a breathless catalogue of
local happenings.
"You know our new neighbour, Mr. Penricarde?" she
vociferated; "awfully rich, owns tin mines in Cornwall,
middle-aged and rather quiet. He's taken the Red House
on a long lease and spent a lot of money on alterations
and improvements. Well, Toby's sold him the Brogue!"
Clovis spent a moment or two in assimilating the
astonishing news; then he broke out into unstinted
congratulation. If he had belonged to a more emotional
race he would probably have kissed Mrs. Mullet.
"How wonderfully lucky to have pulled it off at
last! Now you can buy a decent animal. I've always said
that Toby was clever. Ever so many congratulations."
"Don't congratulate me. It's the most unfortunate
thing that could have happened!" said Mrs. Mullet
dramatically.
Clovis stared at her in amazement.
"Mr. Penricarde," said Mrs. Mullet, sinking her
voice to what she imagined to be an impressive whisper,
though it rather resembled a hoarse, excited squeak, "Mr.
Penricarde has just begun to pay attentions to Jessie.
Slight at first, but now unmistakable. I was a fool not
to have seen it sooner. Yesterday, at the Rectory garden
party, he asked her what her favourite flowers were, and
she told him carnations, and to-day a whole stack of
carnations has arrived, clove and malmaison and lovely
dark red ones, regular exhibition blooms, and a box of
chocolates that he must have got on purpose from London.
And he's asked her to go round the links with him to-
morrow. And now, just at this critical moment, Toby has
sold him that animal. It's a calamity!"
"But you've been trying to get the horse off your
hands for years," said Clovis.
"I've got a houseful of daughters," said Mrs.
Mullet, "and I've been trying - well, not to get them off
my hands, of course, but a husband or two wouldn't be
amiss among the lot of them; there are six of them, you
know."
"I don't know," said Clovis, "I've never counted,
but I expect you're right as to the number; mothers
- trifle [´traifəl]
n.琐事，小事；少量 (初中英语单词) - throat [θrəut] n.咽喉；嗓子；出入口 (初中英语单词)
- additional [ə´diʃənəl] a.附加的，额外的 (初中英语单词)
- punishment [´pʌniʃmənt] n.罚，刑罚 (初中英语单词)
- dreadfully [dredfuli] ad.可怕地；糟透地 (初中英语单词)
- conscience [´kɔnʃəns] n.良心；道德心 (初中英语单词)
- recite [ri´sait] v.背诵；叙述 (初中英语单词)
- suggestion [sə´dʒestʃən] n.建议，提议；暗示 (初中英语单词)
- contribute [kən´tribju:t] v.贡献出；投稿；捐献 (初中英语单词)
- enormous [i´nɔ:məs] a.巨大地，很，极 (初中英语单词)
- violence [´vaiələns] n.猛烈；暴力(行) (初中英语单词)
- breath [breθ] n.呼吸；气息 (初中英语单词)
- reference [´refərəns] n.参考；参照；出处 (初中英语单词)
- safely [´seifli] ad.安全地；平安地 (初中英语单词)
- savage [´sævidʒ] a.野蛮的 n.蛮人 (初中英语单词)
- tradition [trə´diʃən] n.传统；惯例；传说 (初中英语单词)
- career [kə´riə] n.经历；生涯；职业 (初中英语单词)
- recognition [,rekəg´niʃən] n.认出；认识；承认 (初中英语单词)
- hunter [´hʌntə] n.猎人；猎狗；猎马 (初中英语单词)
- imagination [i,mædʒi´neiʃən] n.想象(力) (初中英语单词)
- sickness [´siknis] n.生病；呕吐，恶心 (初中英语单词)
- lightning [´laitniŋ] n.闪电 a.突然的 (初中英语单词)
- yesterday [´jestədi] n.&ad.昨天；前不久 (初中英语单词)
- seeing [si:iŋ] see的现在分词 n.视觉 (高中英语单词)
- handful [hændful] n.一把，少数，一小撮 (高中英语单词)
- rotten [´rɔtn] a.腐烂的；腐朽的 (高中英语单词)
- personally [´pə:sənəli] ad.亲自；就个人来说 (高中英语单词)
- imitation [,imi´teiʃən] n.模仿；仿制品；赝品 (高中英语单词)
- breathless [´breθlis] a.屏息的 (高中英语单词)
- catalogue [´kætəlɔg] n.一览表 v.编目，归类 (高中英语单词)
- decent [´di:sənt] a.体面的，正派的 (高中英语单词)
- congratulate [kən´grætjuleit] vt.祝贺 (高中英语单词)
- impressive [im´presiv] a.给人深刻印象的 (高中英语单词)
- squeak [skwi:k] n.&vi.(发)尖叫(声) (高中英语单词)
- exhibition [eksi´biʃ(ə)n] n.展览；显示；表演 (高中英语单词)
- critical [´kritikəl] a.批评的；关键性的 (高中英语单词)
- superfluous [su:´pə:fluəs, sju:-] a.过剩的，多余的 (英语四级单词)
- ridden [´ridn] ride 的过去分词 (英语四级单词)
- disregard [,disri´gɑ:d] vt.&n.不顾；漠视 (英语四级单词)
- roadside [´rəudsaid] n.&a.路边(的) (英语四级单词)
- zigzag [´zigzæg] n.锯齿形 a.工字形(的) (英语四级单词)
- prevalent [´prevələnt] a.流行的；普遍的 (英语四级单词)
- wonderfully [´wʌndəfuli] ad.令人惊讶地；奇妙地 (英语四级单词)
- hoarse [hɔ:s] a.嘶哑的；嗓门粗哑的 (英语四级单词)
- trying [´traiiŋ] a.难堪的；费劲的 (英语四级单词)
- ferocious [fə´rəuʃəs] a.凶猛的；残忍的 (英语六级单词)
- receptacle [ri´septəkl] n.容器；储藏所；插座 (英语六级单词)
- taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
- judicious [dʒu:´diʃəs] a.明智的；贤明的 (英语六级单词)
- hunting [´hʌntiŋ] n.打猎 (英语六级单词)
- purchaser [´pə:tʃəsə] n.买主；采购人 (英语六级单词)
- intimately [´intimitli] ad.密切地；熟悉地 (英语六级单词)
- tolerant [´tɔlərənt] a.宽容的，宽大的 (英语六级单词)
- unmistakable [,ʌnmi´steikəbəl] a.明显的；错不了的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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