章节正文
New Chronicles of Rebecca
by Kate Douglas Wiggin
CONTENTS
First Chronicle
Jack O'Lantern
Second Chronicle
Daughters of Zion
Third Chronicle
Rebecca's Thought Book
Fourth Chronicle
A Tragedy in Millinery
Fifth Chronicle
The Saving of the Colors
Sixth Chronicle
The State of Maine Girl
Seventh Chronicle
The Little Prophet
Eighth Chronicle
Abner Simpson's New Leaf
Ninth Chronicle
The Green Isle
Tenth Chronicle
Rebecca's Reminiscences
Eleventh Chronicle
Abijah the Brave and the Fair Emma Jane
First Chronicle
JACK O'LANTERN
I
Miss Miranda Sawyer's old-fashioned garden was the pleasantest
spot in Riverboro on a sunny July morning. The rich color of the
brick house gleamed and glowed through the shade of the elms and
maples. Luxuriant hop-vines clambered up the lightning rods and
water spouts, hanging their delicate clusters here and there in
graceful profusion. Woodbine transformed the old shed and tool
house to things of beauty, and the flower beds themselves were
the prettiest and most fragrant in all the countryside. A row of
dahlias ran directly around the garden spot,--dahlias scarlet,
gold, and variegated. In the very centre was a round plot where
the upturned faces of a thousand pansies smiled amid their
leaves, and in the four corners were triangular blocks of sweet
phlox over which the butterflies fluttered unceasingly. In the
spaces between ran a riot of portulaca and nasturtiums, while in
the more regular, shell-bordered beds grew spirea and
gillyflowers, mignonette, marigolds, and clove pinks.
Back of the barn and encroaching on the edge of the hay field was
a grove of sweet clover whose white feathery tips fairly bent
under the assaults of the bees, while banks of aromatic mint and
thyme drank in the sunshine and sent it out again into the summer
air, warm, and deliciously odorous.
The hollyhocks were Miss Sawyer's pride, and they grew in a
stately line beneath the four kitchen windows, their tapering
tips set thickly with gay satin circlets of pink or lavender or
crimson.
"They grow something like steeples," thought little Rebecca
Randall, who was weeding the bed, "and the flat, round flowers
are like rosettes; but steeples wouldn't be studded with
rosettes, so if you were writing about them in a composition
you'd have to give up one or the other, and I think I'll give up
the steeples:--
Gay little hollyhock
Lifting your head,
Sweetly rosetted
Out from your bed.
It's a pity the hollyhock isn't really little, instead of
steepling up to the window top, but I can't say, 'Gay TALL
hollyhock.' . . . I might have it 'Lines to a Hollyhock in May,'
for then it would be small; but oh, no! I forgot; in May it
wouldn't be blooming, and it's so pretty to say that its head is
'sweetly rosetted' . . . I wish the teacher wasn't away; she
would like 'sweetly rosetted,' and she would like to hear me
recite 'Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!' that I
learned out of Aunt Jane's Byron; the rolls come booming out of
it just like the waves at the beach. . . . I could make nice
compositions now, everything is blooming so, and it's so warm and
sunny and happy outdoors. Miss Dearborn told me to write
something in my thought book every single day, and I'll begin
this very night when I go to bed."
Rebecca Rowena Randall, the little niece of the brick-house
ladies, and at present sojourning there for purposes of board,
lodging, education, and incidentally such discipline and
chastening as might ultimately produce moral excellence,--Rebecca
Randall had a passion for the rhyme and rhythm of poetry. From
her earliest childhood words had always been to her what dolls
and toys are to other children, and now at twelve she amused
herself with phrases and sentences and images as her schoolmates
played with the pieces of their dissected puzzles. If the heroine
of a story took a "cursory glance" about her "apartment," Rebecca
would shortly ask her Aunt Jane to take a "cursory glance" at her
oversewing or hemming; if the villain "aided and abetted" someone
in committing a crime, she would before long request the pleasure
of "aiding and abetting" in dishwashing or bedmaking. Sometimes
she used the borrowed phrases unconsciously; sometimes she
brought them into the conversation with an intense sense of
pleasure in their harmony or appropriateness; for a beautiful
word or sentence had the same effect upon her imagination as a
fragrant nosegay, a strain of music, or a brilliant sunset.
"How are you gettin' on, Rebecca Rowena?" called a peremptory
voice from within.
"Pretty good, Aunt Miranda; only I wish flowers would ever come
up as thick as this pigweed and plantain and sorrel. What MAKES
weeds be thick and flowers be thin?--I just happened to be
stopping to think a minute when you looked out."
"You think considerable more than you weed, I guess, by
appearances. How many times have you peeked into that humming
bird's nest? Why don't you work all to once and play all to once,
like other folks?"
"I don't know," the child answered, confounded by the question,
and still more by the apparent logic back of it. "I don't know,
Aunt Miranda, but when I'm working outdoors such a Saturday
morning as this, the whole creation just screams to me to stop it
and come and play."
"Well, you needn't go if it does!" responded her aunt sharply.
"It don't scream to me when I'm rollin' out these doughnuts, and
it wouldn't to you if your mind was on your duty."
Rebecca's little brown hands flew in and out among the weeds as
she thought rebelliously: "Creation WOULDN'T scream to Aunt
Miranda; it would know she wouldn't come.
Scream on, thou bright and gay creation, scream!
'Tis not Miranda that will hear thy cry!
Oh, such funny, nice things come into my head out here by myself,
I do wish I could run up and put them down in my thought book
before I forget them, but Aunt Miranda wouldn't like me to leave
off weeding:--
Rebecca was weeding the hollyhock bed
When wonderful thoughts came into her head.
Her aunt was occupied with the rolling pin
And the thoughts of her mind were common and thin.
That wouldn't do because it's mean to Aunt Miranda, and anyway it
isn't good. I MUST crawl under the syringa shade a minute, it's
so hot, and anybody has to stop working once in a while, just to
get their breath, even if they weren't making poetry.
Rebecca was weeding the hollyhock bed When marvelous thoughts
came into her head. Miranda was wielding the rolling pin And
thoughts at such times seemed to her as a sin.
How pretty the hollyhock rosettes look from down here on the
sweet, smelly ground!
"Let me see what would go with rosetting. AIDING AND ABETTING,
PETTING, HEN-SETTING, FRETTING,--there's nothing very nice, but I
can make fretting' do.
Cheered by Rowena's petting,
The flowers are rosetting,
But Aunt Miranda's fretting
Doth somewhat cloud the day."
Suddenly the sound of wagon wheels broke the silence and then a
voice called out--a voice that could not wait until the feet that
belonged to it reached the spot: "Miss Saw-YER! Father's got to
drive over to North Riverboro on an errand, and please can
Rebecca go, too, as it's Saturday morning and vacation besides?"
Rebecca sprang out from under the syringa bush, eyes flashing
with delight as only Rebecca's eyes COULD flash, her face one
luminous circle of joyousanticipation. She clapped her grubby
hands, and dancing up and down, cried: "May I, Aunt Miranda--can
I, Aunt Jane--can I, Aunt Miranda-Jane? I'm more than half
through the bed."
"If you finish your weeding tonight before sundown I s'pose you
can go, so long as Mr. Perkins has been good enough to ask you,"
responded Miss Sawyer reluctantly. "Take off that gingham apron
and wash your hands clean at the pump. You ain't be'n out o' bed
but two hours an' your head looks as rough as if you'd slep' in
it. That comes from layin' on the ground same as a caterpillar.
Smooth your hair down with your hands an' p'r'aps Emma Jane can
braid it as you go along the road. Run up and get your
second-best hair ribbon out o' your upper drawer and put on your
shade hat. No, you can't wear your coral chain--jewelry ain't
appropriate in the morning. How long do you cal'late to be gone,
Emma Jane?"
"I don't know. Father's just been sent for to see about a sick
woman over to North Riverboro. She's got to go to the poor
farm."
This fragment of news speedily brought Miss Sawyer, and her
sister Jane as well, to the door, which commanded a view of Mr.
Perkins and his wagon. Mr. Perkins, the father of Rebecca's bosom
friend, was primarily a blacksmith, and secondarily a selectman
and an overseer of the poor, a man therefore possessed of wide
and varied information.
"Who is it that's sick?" inquired Miranda.
"A woman over to North Riverboro."
"What's the trouble?"
"Can't say."
"Stranger?'
"Yes, and no; she's that wild daughter of old Nate Perry that
used to live up towards Moderation. You remember she ran away to
work in the factory at Milltown and married a do--nothin' fellow
by the name o' John Winslow?"
"Yes; well, where is he? Why don't he take care of her?"
"They ain't worked well in double harness. They've been rovin'
round the country, livin' a month here and a month there wherever
they could get work and house-room. They quarreled a couple o'
weeks ago and he left her. She and the little boy kind o' camped
out in an old loggin' cabin back in the woods and she took in
washin' for a spell; then she got terrible sick and ain't
expected to live."
"Who's been nursing her?" inquired Miss Jane.
"Lizy Ann Dennett, that lives nearest neighbor to the cabin; but
I guess she's tired out bein' good Samaritan. Anyways, she sent
word this mornin' that nobody can't seem to find John Winslow;
that there ain't no relations, and the town's got to be
responsible, so I'm goin' over to see how the land lays. Climb
in, Rebecca. You an' Emmy Jane crowd back on the cushion an' I'll
set forrard. That's the trick! Now we're off!"
"Dear, dear!" sighed Jane Sawyer as the sisters walked back into
by Kate Douglas Wiggin
CONTENTS
First Chronicle
Jack O'Lantern
Second Chronicle
Daughters of Zion
Third Chronicle
Rebecca's Thought Book
Fourth Chronicle
A Tragedy in Millinery
Fifth Chronicle
The Saving of the Colors
Sixth Chronicle
The State of Maine Girl
Seventh Chronicle
The Little Prophet
Eighth Chronicle
Abner Simpson's New Leaf
Ninth Chronicle
The Green Isle
Tenth Chronicle
Rebecca's Reminiscences
Eleventh Chronicle
Abijah the Brave and the Fair Emma Jane
First Chronicle
JACK O'LANTERN
I
Miss Miranda Sawyer's old-fashioned garden was the pleasantest
spot in Riverboro on a sunny July morning. The rich color of the
brick house gleamed and glowed through the shade of the elms and
maples. Luxuriant hop-vines clambered up the lightning rods and
water spouts, hanging their delicate clusters here and there in
graceful profusion. Woodbine transformed the old shed and tool
house to things of beauty, and the flower beds themselves were
the prettiest and most fragrant in all the countryside. A row of
dahlias ran directly around the garden spot,--dahlias scarlet,
gold, and variegated. In the very centre was a round plot where
the upturned faces of a thousand pansies smiled amid their
leaves, and in the four corners were triangular blocks of sweet
phlox over which the butterflies fluttered unceasingly. In the
spaces between ran a riot of portulaca and nasturtiums, while in
the more regular, shell-bordered beds grew spirea and
gillyflowers, mignonette, marigolds, and clove pinks.
Back of the barn and encroaching on the edge of the hay field was
a grove of sweet clover whose white feathery tips fairly bent
under the assaults of the bees, while banks of aromatic mint and
thyme drank in the sunshine and sent it out again into the summer
air, warm, and deliciously odorous.
The hollyhocks were Miss Sawyer's pride, and they grew in a
stately line beneath the four kitchen windows, their tapering
tips set thickly with gay satin circlets of pink or lavender or
crimson.
"They grow something like steeples," thought little Rebecca
Randall, who was weeding the bed, "and the flat, round flowers
are like rosettes; but steeples wouldn't be studded with
rosettes, so if you were writing about them in a composition
you'd have to give up one or the other, and I think I'll give up
the steeples:--
Gay little hollyhock
Lifting your head,
Sweetly rosetted
Out from your bed.
It's a pity the hollyhock isn't really little, instead of
steepling up to the window top, but I can't say, 'Gay TALL
hollyhock.' . . . I might have it 'Lines to a Hollyhock in May,'
for then it would be small; but oh, no! I forgot; in May it
wouldn't be blooming, and it's so pretty to say that its head is
'sweetly rosetted' . . . I wish the teacher wasn't away; she
would like 'sweetly rosetted,' and she would like to hear me
recite 'Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!' that I
learned out of Aunt Jane's Byron; the rolls come booming out of
it just like the waves at the beach. . . . I could make nice
compositions now, everything is blooming so, and it's so warm and
sunny and happy outdoors. Miss Dearborn told me to write
something in my thought book every single day, and I'll begin
this very night when I go to bed."
Rebecca Rowena Randall, the little niece of the brick-house
ladies, and at present sojourning there for purposes of board,
lodging, education, and incidentally such discipline and
chastening as might ultimately produce moral excellence,--Rebecca
Randall had a passion for the rhyme and rhythm of poetry. From
her earliest childhood words had always been to her what dolls
and toys are to other children, and now at twelve she amused
herself with phrases and sentences and images as her schoolmates
played with the pieces of their dissected puzzles. If the heroine
of a story took a "cursory glance" about her "apartment," Rebecca
would shortly ask her Aunt Jane to take a "cursory glance" at her
oversewing or hemming; if the villain "aided and abetted" someone
in committing a crime, she would before long request the pleasure
of "aiding and abetting" in dishwashing or bedmaking. Sometimes
she used the borrowed phrases unconsciously; sometimes she
brought them into the conversation with an intense sense of
pleasure in their harmony or appropriateness; for a beautiful
word or sentence had the same effect upon her imagination as a
fragrant nosegay, a strain of music, or a brilliant sunset.
"How are you gettin' on, Rebecca Rowena?" called a peremptory
voice from within.
"Pretty good, Aunt Miranda; only I wish flowers would ever come
up as thick as this pigweed and plantain and sorrel. What MAKES
weeds be thick and flowers be thin?--I just happened to be
stopping to think a minute when you looked out."
"You think considerable more than you weed, I guess, by
appearances. How many times have you peeked into that humming
bird's nest? Why don't you work all to once and play all to once,
like other folks?"
"I don't know," the child answered, confounded by the question,
and still more by the apparent logic back of it. "I don't know,
Aunt Miranda, but when I'm working outdoors such a Saturday
morning as this, the whole creation just screams to me to stop it
and come and play."
"Well, you needn't go if it does!" responded her aunt sharply.
"It don't scream to me when I'm rollin' out these doughnuts, and
it wouldn't to you if your mind was on your duty."
Rebecca's little brown hands flew in and out among the weeds as
she thought rebelliously: "Creation WOULDN'T scream to Aunt
Miranda; it would know she wouldn't come.
Scream on, thou bright and gay creation, scream!
'Tis not Miranda that will hear thy cry!
Oh, such funny, nice things come into my head out here by myself,
I do wish I could run up and put them down in my thought book
before I forget them, but Aunt Miranda wouldn't like me to leave
off weeding:--
Rebecca was weeding the hollyhock bed
When wonderful thoughts came into her head.
Her aunt was occupied with the rolling pin
And the thoughts of her mind were common and thin.
That wouldn't do because it's mean to Aunt Miranda, and anyway it
isn't good. I MUST crawl under the syringa shade a minute, it's
so hot, and anybody has to stop working once in a while, just to
get their breath, even if they weren't making poetry.
Rebecca was weeding the hollyhock bed When marvelous thoughts
came into her head. Miranda was wielding the rolling pin And
thoughts at such times seemed to her as a sin.
How pretty the hollyhock rosettes look from down here on the
sweet, smelly ground!
"Let me see what would go with rosetting. AIDING AND ABETTING,
PETTING, HEN-SETTING, FRETTING,--there's nothing very nice, but I
can make fretting' do.
Cheered by Rowena's petting,
The flowers are rosetting,
But Aunt Miranda's fretting
Doth somewhat cloud the day."
Suddenly the sound of wagon wheels broke the silence and then a
voice called out--a voice that could not wait until the feet that
belonged to it reached the spot: "Miss Saw-YER! Father's got to
drive over to North Riverboro on an errand, and please can
Rebecca go, too, as it's Saturday morning and vacation besides?"
Rebecca sprang out from under the syringa bush, eyes flashing
with delight as only Rebecca's eyes COULD flash, her face one
luminous circle of joyousanticipation. She clapped her grubby
hands, and dancing up and down, cried: "May I, Aunt Miranda--can
I, Aunt Jane--can I, Aunt Miranda-Jane? I'm more than half
through the bed."
"If you finish your weeding tonight before sundown I s'pose you
can go, so long as Mr. Perkins has been good enough to ask you,"
responded Miss Sawyer reluctantly. "Take off that gingham apron
and wash your hands clean at the pump. You ain't be'n out o' bed
but two hours an' your head looks as rough as if you'd slep' in
it. That comes from layin' on the ground same as a caterpillar.
Smooth your hair down with your hands an' p'r'aps Emma Jane can
braid it as you go along the road. Run up and get your
second-best hair ribbon out o' your upper drawer and put on your
shade hat. No, you can't wear your coral chain--jewelry ain't
appropriate in the morning. How long do you cal'late to be gone,
Emma Jane?"
"I don't know. Father's just been sent for to see about a sick
woman over to North Riverboro. She's got to go to the poor
farm."
This fragment of news speedily brought Miss Sawyer, and her
sister Jane as well, to the door, which commanded a view of Mr.
Perkins and his wagon. Mr. Perkins, the father of Rebecca's bosom
friend, was primarily a blacksmith, and secondarily a selectman
and an overseer of the poor, a man therefore possessed of wide
and varied information.
"Who is it that's sick?" inquired Miranda.
"A woman over to North Riverboro."
"What's the trouble?"
"Can't say."
"Stranger?'
"Yes, and no; she's that wild daughter of old Nate Perry that
used to live up towards Moderation. You remember she ran away to
work in the factory at Milltown and married a do--nothin' fellow
by the name o' John Winslow?"
"Yes; well, where is he? Why don't he take care of her?"
"They ain't worked well in double harness. They've been rovin'
round the country, livin' a month here and a month there wherever
they could get work and house-room. They quarreled a couple o'
weeks ago and he left her. She and the little boy kind o' camped
out in an old loggin' cabin back in the woods and she took in
washin' for a spell; then she got terrible sick and ain't
expected to live."
"Who's been nursing her?" inquired Miss Jane.
"Lizy Ann Dennett, that lives nearest neighbor to the cabin; but
I guess she's tired out bein' good Samaritan. Anyways, she sent
word this mornin' that nobody can't seem to find John Winslow;
that there ain't no relations, and the town's got to be
responsible, so I'm goin' over to see how the land lays. Climb
in, Rebecca. You an' Emmy Jane crowd back on the cushion an' I'll
set forrard. That's the trick! Now we're off!"
"Dear, dear!" sighed Jane Sawyer as the sisters walked back into
- tragedy [´trædʒidi]
n.悲剧；惨案；灾难 (初中英语单词) - old-fashioned [´əuld´feʃənd] a.老式的；过时的 (初中英语单词)
- lightning [´laitniŋ] n.闪电 a.突然的 (初中英语单词)
- delicate [´delikət] a.精美的；微妙的 (初中英语单词)
- sunshine [´sʌnʃain] n.日光，阳光 (初中英语单词)
- writing [´raitiŋ] n.书写；写作；书法 (初中英语单词)
- discipline [´disiplin] n.纪律；训练 (初中英语单词)
- passion [´pæʃən] n.激情；激怒；恋爱 (初中英语单词)
- poetry [´pəuitri] n.诗；诗意 (初中英语单词)
- childhood [´tʃaildhud] n.幼年(时代)；早期 (初中英语单词)
- shortly [´ʃɔ:tli] ad.立刻，马上；不久 (初中英语单词)
- harmony [´hɑ:məni] n.调合，协调，和谐 (初中英语单词)
- sentence [´sentəns] n.判决 vt.宣判；处刑 (初中英语单词)
- imagination [i,mædʒi´neiʃən] n.想象(力) (初中英语单词)
- brilliant [´briliənt] a.灿烂的；杰出的 (初中英语单词)
- considerable [kən´sidərəbəl] a.重要的；值得重视 (初中英语单词)
- apparent [ə´pærənt] a.显然的；表面上的 (初中英语单词)
- working [´wə:kiŋ] a.工人的；劳动的 (初中英语单词)
- creation [kri´eiʃən] n.创作；作品；创造 (初中英语单词)
- scream [skri:m] v.&n.尖叫(声) (初中英语单词)
- breath [breθ] n.呼吸；气息 (初中英语单词)
- marvelous [´mɑ:viləs] (=marvellous) a.奇异的 (初中英语单词)
- errand [´erənd] n.差使，使命 (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)
- sprang [spræŋ] spring 的过去式 (初中英语单词)
- circle [´sə:kəl] n.圆圈 v.环绕；盘旋 (初中英语单词)
- ribbon [´ribən] n.缎带；带子；色带 (初中英语单词)
- drawer [drɔ:ə] n.抽屉 (初中英语单词)
- fragment [´frægmənt] n.碎片；破片；断片 (初中英语单词)
- therefore [´ðeəfɔ:] ad.&conj.因此；所以 (初中英语单词)
- harness [´hɑ:nis] vt.上马具 n.马具 (初中英语单词)
- cushion [´kuʃən] n.垫子，坐褥 (初中英语单词)
- hanging [´hæŋiŋ] n.绞刑 a.悬挂着的 (高中英语单词)
- fragrant [´freigrənt] a.芳香的，芬芳的 (高中英语单词)
- clover [´kləuvə] n.三叶草 (高中英语单词)
- thickly [´θikli] ad.厚厚地；密密地 (高中英语单词)
- lavender [´lævində] n.熏衣草；淡紫色 (高中英语单词)
- intense [in´tens] a.强烈的；紧张的 (高中英语单词)
- strain [strein] vt.拉紧 vi.拖 n.张力 (高中英语单词)
- joyous [´dʒɔiəs] a.充满快乐的 (高中英语单词)
- blacksmith [´blæk,smiθ] n.铁匠，锻工 (高中英语单词)
- countryside [´kʌntrisaid] n.乡下，农村 (英语四级单词)
- blooming [´blu:miŋ] a.正开花的；妙龄的 (英语四级单词)
- incidentally [,insi´dentəli] ad.顺便一提；偶然地 (英语四级单词)
- ultimately [´ʌltimitli] ad.最后，最终 (英语四级单词)
- rhythm [´riðəm] n.(诗的)韵律；格律 (英语四级单词)
- villain [´vilən] n.坏人；恶棍；反面角色 (英语四级单词)
- unconsciously [ʌn´kɔʃəsli] ad.无意识地；不觉察地 (英语四级单词)
- anticipation [æn,tisi´peiʃən] n.预期；预料；期望 (英语四级单词)
- reluctantly [ri´lʌktəntli] a.不情愿地；勉强地 (英语四级单词)
- speedily [´spi:dili] ad.迅速地 (英语四级单词)
- primarily [´praimərəli, prai´merəli] ad.首先；主要地 (英语四级单词)
- varied [´veərid] a.各种各样的 (英语四级单词)
- moderation [,mɔdə´reiʃən] n.适度；温和；节制 (英语四级单词)
- luxuriant [lʌg´zjuəriənt] a.繁茂的；丰富的 (英语六级单词)
- triangular [trai´æŋgjulə] a.三角(形)的 (英语六级单词)
- aromatic [,ærə´mætik] a.芳香的；芬芳的 (英语六级单词)
- sundown [´sʌndaun] n.日落 (英语六级单词)
- gingham [´giŋəm] n.方格花布，条格平布 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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