章节正文
"You'll never ketch him, Ab," responded the
sheriff. "He's cut off the same piece o' goods as
that there cider press and that there character and
that there four-seventy-five o' yourn; nobody ever
see any of 'em but you, and you'll never see 'em
again!"
Mrs. Simpson, who was decidedly Abner's better
half, took in washing and went out to do days'
cleaning, and the town helped in the feeding and
clothing of the children. George, a lanky boy of
fourteen, did chores on neighboring farms, and
the others, Samuel, Clara Belle, Susan, Elijah, and
Elisha, went to school, when sufficiently clothed
and not otherwise more pleasantly engaged.
There were no secrets in the villages that lay
along the banks of Pleasant River. There were
many hard-working people among the inhabitants,
but life wore away so quietly and slowly that there
was a good deal of spare time for conversation,--
under the trees at noon in the hayfield; hanging
over the bridge at nightfall; seated about the
stove in the village store of an evening. These
meeting-places furnished ample ground for the
discussion of current events as viewed by the mas-
culine eye, while choir rehearsals, sewing societies,
reading circles, church picnics, and the like, gave
opportunity for the expression of feminine opinion.
All this was taken very much for granted, as a
rule, but now and then some supersensitive person
made violent objections to it, as a theory of life.
Delia Weeks, for example, was a maiden lady
who did dressmaking in a small way; she fell ill,
and although attended by all the physicians in
the neighborhood, was sinking slowly into a
decline when her cousin Cyrus asked her to come and
keep house for him in Lewiston. She went, and in
a year grew into a robust, hearty, cheerful woman.
Returning to Riverboro on a brief visit, she was
asked if she meant to end her days away from
home.
"I do most certainly, if I can get any other
place to stay," she responded candidly. "I was
bein' worn to a shadder here, tryin' to keep my
little secrets to myself, an' never succeedin'. First
they had it I wanted to marry the minister, and
when he took a wife in Standish I was known to
be disappointed. Then for five or six years they
suspicioned I was tryin' for a place to teach school,
and when I gave up hope, an' took to dressmakin',
they pitied me and sympathized with me for that.
When father died I was bound I'd never let anybody
know how I was left, for that spites 'em
worse than anything else; but there's ways o'
findin' out, an' they found out, hard as I fought
'em! Then there was my brother James that went
to Arizona when he was sixteen. I gave good news
of him for thirty years runnin', but aunt Achsy
Tarbox had a ferretin' cousin that went out to
Tombstone for her health, and she wrote to a
postmaster, or to some kind of a town authority, and
found Jim and wrote back aunt Achsy all about
him and just how unfortunate he'd been. They
knew when I had my teeth out and a new set
made; they knew when I put on a false front-
piece; they knew when the fruit peddler asked
me to be his third wife--I never told 'em, an' you
can be sure HE never did, but they don't NEED to be
told in this village; they have nothin' to do but
guess, an' they'll guess right every time. I was
all tuckered out tryin' to mislead 'em and deceive
'em and sidetrack 'em; but the minute I got where
I wa'n't put under a microscope by day an' a
telescope by night and had myself TO myself without
sayin' `By your leave,' I begun to pick up. Cousin
Cyrus is an old man an' consid'able trouble, but he
thinks my teeth are handsome an' says I've got
a splendid suit of hair. There ain't a person in
Lewiston that knows about the minister, or father's
will, or Jim's doin's, or the fruit peddler; an' if
they should find out, they wouldn't care, an' they
couldn't remember; for Lewiston 's a busy place,
thanks be!"
Miss Delia Weeks may have exaggerated matters
somewhat, but it is easy to imagine that Rebecca
as well as all the other Riverboro children
had heard the particulars of the Widow Rideout's
missing sleigh and Abner Simpson's supposed
connection with it.
There is not an excess of delicacy or chivalry in
the ordinary country school, and several choice
conundrums and bits of verse dealing with the Simpson
affair were bandied about among the scholars,
uttered always, be it said to their credit, in
undertones, and when the Simpson children were not in
the group.
Rebecca Randall was of precisely the same stock,
and had had much the same associations as her
schoolmates, so one can hardly say why she so hated
mean gossip and so instinctively held herself aloof
from it.
Among the Riverboro girls of her own age was a
certain excellently named Minnie Smellie, who was
anything but a general favorite. She was a ferret-
eyed, blond-haired, spindle-legged little creature
whose mind was a cross between that of a parrot
and a sheep. She was suspected of copying answers
from other girls' slates, although she had
never been caught in the act. Rebecca and Emma
Jane always knew when she had brought a tart or
a triangle of layer cake with her school luncheon,
because on those days she forsook the cheerful
society of her mates and sought a safe solitude in
the woods, returning after a time with a jocund
smile on her smug face.
After one of these private luncheons Rebecca
had been tempted beyond her strength, and when
Minnie took her seat among them asked, "Is your
headache better, Minnie? Let me wipe off that
strawberry jam over your mouth."
There was no jam there as a matter of fact,
but the guilty Minnie's handkerchief went to her
crimson face in a flash.
Rebecca confessed to Emma Jane that same
afternoon that she felt ashamed of her prank. "I
do hate her ways," she exclaimed, "but I'm sorry
I let her know we 'spected her; and so to make
up, I gave her that little piece of broken coral I
keep in my bead purse; you know the one?"
"It don't hardly seem as if she deserved that,
and her so greedy," remarked Emma Jane.
"I know it, but it makes me feel better," said
Rebecca largely; "and then I've had it two years,
and it's broken so it wouldn't ever be any real
good, beautiful as it is to look at."
The coral had partly served its purpose as a
reconciling bond, when one afternoon Rebecca,
who had stayed after school for her grammar lesson
as usual, was returning home by way of the
short cut. Far ahead, beyond the bars, she espied
the Simpson children just entering the woodsy
bit. Seesaw was not with them, so she hastened
her steps in order to secure company on her homeward
walk. They were speedily lost to view, but
when she had almost overtaken them she heard,
in the trees beyond, Minnie Smellie's voice lifted
high in song, and the sound of a child's sobbing.
Clara Belle, Susan, and the twins were running
along the path, and Minnie was dancing up and
down, shrieking:--
"`What made the sleigh love Simpson so?'
The eager children cried;
`Why Simpson loved the sleigh, you know,'
The teacher quick replied."
The last glimpse of the routed Simpson tribe,
and the last Rutter of their tattered garments,
disappeared in the dim distance. The fall of one small
stone cast by the valiant Elijah, known as "the fighting
twin," did break the stillness of the woods for
a moment, but it did not come within a hundred
yards of Minnie, who shouted "Jail Birds" at the
top of her lungs and then turned, with an agreeable
feeling of excitement, to meet Rebecca, standing
perfectly still in the path, with a day of reckoning
plainly set forth in her blazing eyes.
Minnie's face was not pleasant to see, for a coward
detected at the moment of wrongdoing is not
an object of delight.
"Minnie Smellie, if ever--I--catch--you--
singing--that--to the Simpsons again--do you
know what I'll do?" asked Rebecca in a tone of
concentrated rage.
"I don't know and I don't care," said Minnie
jauntily, though her looks belied her.
"I'll take that piece of coral away from you, and
I THINK I shall slap you besides!"
"You wouldn't darst," retorted Minnie. "If
you do, I'll tell my mother and the teacher, so
there!"
"I don't care if you tell your mother, my mother,
and all your relations, and the president," said
Rebecca, gaining courage as the noble words fell from
her lips. "I don't care if you tell the town, the
whole of York county, the state of Maine and--
and the nation!" she finished grandiloquently.
"Now you run home and remember what I say.
If you do it again, and especially if you say `Jail
Birds,' if I think it's right and my duty, I shall
punish you somehow."
The next morning at recess Rebecca observed
Minnie telling the tale with variations to Huldah
Meserve. "She THREATENED me," whispered Minnie,
"but I never believe a word she says."
The latter remark was spoken with the direct
intention of being overheard, for Minnie had spasms
of bravery, when well surrounded by the machinery
of law and order.
As Rebecca went back to her seat she asked
Miss Dearborn if she might pass a note to Minnie
Smellie and received permission. This was the note:--
Of all the girls that are so mean
There's none like Minnie Smellie.
sheriff. "He's cut off the same piece o' goods as
that there cider press and that there character and
that there four-seventy-five o' yourn; nobody ever
see any of 'em but you, and you'll never see 'em
again!"
Mrs. Simpson, who was decidedly Abner's better
half, took in washing and went out to do days'
cleaning, and the town helped in the feeding and
clothing of the children. George, a lanky boy of
fourteen, did chores on neighboring farms, and
the others, Samuel, Clara Belle, Susan, Elijah, and
Elisha, went to school, when sufficiently clothed
and not otherwise more pleasantly engaged.
There were no secrets in the villages that lay
along the banks of Pleasant River. There were
many hard-working people among the inhabitants,
but life wore away so quietly and slowly that there
was a good deal of spare time for conversation,--
under the trees at noon in the hayfield; hanging
over the bridge at nightfall; seated about the
stove in the village store of an evening. These
meeting-places furnished ample ground for the
discussion of current events as viewed by the mas-
culine eye, while choir rehearsals, sewing societies,
reading circles, church picnics, and the like, gave
opportunity for the expression of feminine opinion.
All this was taken very much for granted, as a
rule, but now and then some supersensitive person
made violent objections to it, as a theory of life.
Delia Weeks, for example, was a maiden lady
who did dressmaking in a small way; she fell ill,
and although attended by all the physicians in
the neighborhood, was sinking slowly into a
decline when her cousin Cyrus asked her to come and
keep house for him in Lewiston. She went, and in
a year grew into a robust, hearty, cheerful woman.
Returning to Riverboro on a brief visit, she was
asked if she meant to end her days away from
home.
"I do most certainly, if I can get any other
place to stay," she responded candidly. "I was
bein' worn to a shadder here, tryin' to keep my
little secrets to myself, an' never succeedin'. First
they had it I wanted to marry the minister, and
when he took a wife in Standish I was known to
be disappointed. Then for five or six years they
suspicioned I was tryin' for a place to teach school,
and when I gave up hope, an' took to dressmakin',
they pitied me and sympathized with me for that.
When father died I was bound I'd never let anybody
know how I was left, for that spites 'em
worse than anything else; but there's ways o'
findin' out, an' they found out, hard as I fought
'em! Then there was my brother James that went
to Arizona when he was sixteen. I gave good news
of him for thirty years runnin', but aunt Achsy
Tarbox had a ferretin' cousin that went out to
Tombstone for her health, and she wrote to a
postmaster, or to some kind of a town authority, and
found Jim and wrote back aunt Achsy all about
him and just how unfortunate he'd been. They
knew when I had my teeth out and a new set
made; they knew when I put on a false front-
piece; they knew when the fruit peddler asked
me to be his third wife--I never told 'em, an' you
can be sure HE never did, but they don't NEED to be
told in this village; they have nothin' to do but
guess, an' they'll guess right every time. I was
all tuckered out tryin' to mislead 'em and deceive
'em and sidetrack 'em; but the minute I got where
I wa'n't put under a microscope by day an' a
telescope by night and had myself TO myself without
sayin' `By your leave,' I begun to pick up. Cousin
Cyrus is an old man an' consid'able trouble, but he
thinks my teeth are handsome an' says I've got
a splendid suit of hair. There ain't a person in
Lewiston that knows about the minister, or father's
will, or Jim's doin's, or the fruit peddler; an' if
they should find out, they wouldn't care, an' they
couldn't remember; for Lewiston 's a busy place,
thanks be!"
Miss Delia Weeks may have exaggerated matters
somewhat, but it is easy to imagine that Rebecca
as well as all the other Riverboro children
had heard the particulars of the Widow Rideout's
missing sleigh and Abner Simpson's supposed
connection with it.
There is not an excess of delicacy or chivalry in
the ordinary country school, and several choice
conundrums and bits of verse dealing with the Simpson
affair were bandied about among the scholars,
uttered always, be it said to their credit, in
undertones, and when the Simpson children were not in
the group.
Rebecca Randall was of precisely the same stock,
and had had much the same associations as her
schoolmates, so one can hardly say why she so hated
mean gossip and so instinctively held herself aloof
from it.
Among the Riverboro girls of her own age was a
certain excellently named Minnie Smellie, who was
anything but a general favorite. She was a ferret-
eyed, blond-haired, spindle-legged little creature
whose mind was a cross between that of a parrot
and a sheep. She was suspected of copying answers
from other girls' slates, although she had
never been caught in the act. Rebecca and Emma
Jane always knew when she had brought a tart or
a triangle of layer cake with her school luncheon,
because on those days she forsook the cheerful
society of her mates and sought a safe solitude in
the woods, returning after a time with a jocund
smile on her smug face.
After one of these private luncheons Rebecca
had been tempted beyond her strength, and when
Minnie took her seat among them asked, "Is your
headache better, Minnie? Let me wipe off that
strawberry jam over your mouth."
There was no jam there as a matter of fact,
but the guilty Minnie's handkerchief went to her
crimson face in a flash.
Rebecca confessed to Emma Jane that same
afternoon that she felt ashamed of her prank. "I
do hate her ways," she exclaimed, "but I'm sorry
I let her know we 'spected her; and so to make
up, I gave her that little piece of broken coral I
keep in my bead purse; you know the one?"
"It don't hardly seem as if she deserved that,
and her so greedy," remarked Emma Jane.
"I know it, but it makes me feel better," said
Rebecca largely; "and then I've had it two years,
and it's broken so it wouldn't ever be any real
good, beautiful as it is to look at."
The coral had partly served its purpose as a
reconciling bond, when one afternoon Rebecca,
who had stayed after school for her grammar lesson
as usual, was returning home by way of the
short cut. Far ahead, beyond the bars, she espied
the Simpson children just entering the woodsy
bit. Seesaw was not with them, so she hastened
her steps in order to secure company on her homeward
walk. They were speedily lost to view, but
when she had almost overtaken them she heard,
in the trees beyond, Minnie Smellie's voice lifted
high in song, and the sound of a child's sobbing.
Clara Belle, Susan, and the twins were running
along the path, and Minnie was dancing up and
down, shrieking:--
"`What made the sleigh love Simpson so?'
The eager children cried;
`Why Simpson loved the sleigh, you know,'
The teacher quick replied."
The last glimpse of the routed Simpson tribe,
and the last Rutter of their tattered garments,
disappeared in the dim distance. The fall of one small
stone cast by the valiant Elijah, known as "the fighting
twin," did break the stillness of the woods for
a moment, but it did not come within a hundred
yards of Minnie, who shouted "Jail Birds" at the
top of her lungs and then turned, with an agreeable
feeling of excitement, to meet Rebecca, standing
perfectly still in the path, with a day of reckoning
plainly set forth in her blazing eyes.
Minnie's face was not pleasant to see, for a coward
detected at the moment of wrongdoing is not
an object of delight.
"Minnie Smellie, if ever--I--catch--you--
singing--that--to the Simpsons again--do you
know what I'll do?" asked Rebecca in a tone of
concentrated rage.
"I don't know and I don't care," said Minnie
jauntily, though her looks belied her.
"I'll take that piece of coral away from you, and
I THINK I shall slap you besides!"
"You wouldn't darst," retorted Minnie. "If
you do, I'll tell my mother and the teacher, so
there!"
"I don't care if you tell your mother, my mother,
and all your relations, and the president," said
Rebecca, gaining courage as the noble words fell from
her lips. "I don't care if you tell the town, the
whole of York county, the state of Maine and--
and the nation!" she finished grandiloquently.
"Now you run home and remember what I say.
If you do it again, and especially if you say `Jail
Birds,' if I think it's right and my duty, I shall
punish you somehow."
The next morning at recess Rebecca observed
Minnie telling the tale with variations to Huldah
Meserve. "She THREATENED me," whispered Minnie,
"but I never believe a word she says."
The latter remark was spoken with the direct
intention of being overheard, for Minnie had spasms
of bravery, when well surrounded by the machinery
of law and order.
As Rebecca went back to her seat she asked
Miss Dearborn if she might pass a note to Minnie
Smellie and received permission. This was the note:--
Of all the girls that are so mean
There's none like Minnie Smellie.
- character [´kæriktə]
n.特性；性质；人物；字 (初中英语单词) - neighboring [´neibəriŋ] a.邻近的；接壤的 (初中英语单词)
- sufficiently [sə´fiʃəntli] ad.充分地，足够地 (初中英语单词)
- otherwise [´ʌðəwaiz] ad.另外 conj.否则 (初中英语单词)
- violent [´vaiələnt] a.强暴的；猛烈的 (初中英语单词)
- maiden [´meidn] n.少女 a.未婚的 (初中英语单词)
- neighborhood [´neibəhud] n.邻居；邻近；附近 (初中英语单词)
- cheerful [´tʃiəful] a.快乐的；高兴的 (初中英语单词)
- minister [´ministə] n.部长；大臣 v.伺候 (初中英语单词)
- unfortunate [ʌn´fɔ:tʃunit] a.不幸的，运气差的 (初中英语单词)
- excess [´ekses] n.超过 a.过分的 (初中英语单词)
- guilty [´gilti] a.有罪的；心虚的 (初中英语单词)
- handkerchief [´hæŋkətʃif] n.手帕，手绢 (初中英语单词)
- ashamed [ə´ʃeimd] a.惭愧；不好意思 (初中英语单词)
- partly [´pɑ:tli] ad.部分地；不完全地 (初中英语单词)
- glimpse [glimps] n.&v.瞥见 (初中英语单词)
- excitement [ik´saitmənt] n.兴奋；骚动；煽动 (初中英语单词)
- spoken [´spəukən] speak的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- permission [pə´miʃən] n.允许；同意；许可 (初中英语单词)
- decidedly [di´saididli] ad.坚决地，果断地 (高中英语单词)
- pleasantly [´plezntli] ad.令人愉快地；舒适地 (高中英语单词)
- sewing [´səuiŋ] n.缝纫；(书的)装订 (高中英语单词)
- hearty [´hɑ:ti] a.热忱的；强健的 (高中英语单词)
- arizona [,æri´zəunə] n.亚利桑那(州) (高中英语单词)
- delicacy [´delikəsi] n.精美；娇弱，微妙 (高中英语单词)
- chivalry [´ʃivəlri] n.侠义；骑士团 (高中英语单词)
- dealing [´di:liŋ] n.交易；来往 (高中英语单词)
- precisely [pri´saisli] ad.精确地；刻板地 (高中英语单词)
- gossip [´gɔsip] n.&vi.说闲话；聊天 (高中英语单词)
- solitude [´sɔlitju:d] n.孤独；寂寞；荒凉 (高中英语单词)
- stillness [´stilnis] n.不动；无声，寂静 (高中英语单词)
- recess [ri´ses] n.休息；休会 (高中英语单词)
- bridge [bridʒ] n.桥(梁)；鼻梁；桥牌 (英语四级单词)
- feminine [´feminin] a.女性的 (英语四级单词)
- microscope [´maikrəskəup] n.显微镜 (英语四级单词)
- sleigh [slei] n.雪橇 vi.坐雪橇 (英语四级单词)
- instinctively [in´stiŋktivli] ad.本能地 (英语四级单词)
- triangle [´traiæŋgəl] n.三角(形)；三角关系 (英语四级单词)
- speedily [´spi:dili] ad.迅速地 (英语四级单词)
- tattered [´tætəd] a.(衣服等)破烂的 (英语四级单词)
- valiant [´væliənt] a.勇敢的，英勇的 (英语四级单词)
- bravery [´breivəri] n.勇敢，大胆，刚毅 (英语四级单词)
- nightfall [´nait,fɔ:l] n.黄昏；傍晚 (英语六级单词)
- robust [rəu´bʌst] a.强建的；茁壮的 (英语六级单词)
- forsook [fə´suk] forsake的过去式 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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