章节正文
"I don' know how tis, but the folks in that Cinderella story seem
to match together somehow; they're all pow'ful onlikely--the
prince feller with the glass slipper, and the hull bunch; but
jest the same you kind o' gulp em all down in a lump. But land,
Rebecky, nobody'd swaller that there village maiden o' your'n,
and as for what's-his-name Littlefield, that come out o' them
bushes, such a feller never 'd a' be'n IN bushes! No, Rebecky,
you're the smartest little critter there is in this township, and
you beat your Uncle Jerry all holler when it comes to usin' a
lead pencil, but I say that ain't no true Riverboro story! Look
at the way they talk! What was that' bout being BETROTHED'?"
"Betrothed is a genteel word for engaged to be married,"
explained the crushed and chastened author; and it was fortunate
the doting old man did not notice her eyes in the twilight, or he
might have known that tears were not far away.
"Well, that's all right, then; I'm as ignorant as Cooper's cow
when it comes to the dictionary. How about what's-his-name
callin' the girl 'Naysweet'?"
"I thought myself that sounded foolish,:" confessed Rebecca; "but
it's what the Doctor calls Cora when he tries to persuade her not
to quarrel with his mother who comes to live with them. I know
they don't say it in Riverboro or Temperance, but I thought
perhaps it was Boston talk."
"Well, it ain't!" asserted Mr. Cobb decisively. "I've druv Boston
men up in the stage from Milltown many's the time, and none of em
ever said Naysweet to me, nor nothin'like it. They talked like
folks, every mother's son of em! If I'd a' had that
what's-his-name on the harricane deck' o' the stage and he tried
any naysweetin' on me, I'd a' pitched him into the cornfield,
side o' the road. I guess you ain't growed up enough for that
kind of a story, Rebecky, for your poetry can't be beat in York
County, that's sure, and your compositions are good enough to
read out loud in town meetin' any day!"
Rebecca brightened up a little and bade the old couple her usual
affectionate good night, but she descended the hill in a saddened
mood. When she reached the bridge the sun, a ball of red fire,
was setting behind Squire Bean's woods. As she looked, it shone
full on the broad, still bosom of the river, and for one perfect
instant the trees on the shores were reflected, all swimming in a
sea of pink. Leaning over the rail, she watched the light fade
from crimson to carmine, from carmine to rose, from rose to
amber, and from amber to gray. Then withdrawing Lancelot or the
Parted Lovers from her apron pocket, she tore the pages into bits
and dropped them into the water below with a sigh.
"Uncle Jerry never said a word about the ending!" she thought;
"and that was so nice!"
And she was right; but while Uncle Jerry was an illuminating
critic when it came to the actions and language of his Riverboro
neighbors, he had no power to direct the young mariner when she
"followed the gleam," and used her imagination.
OUR SECRET SOCIETY
November, 187--
Our Secret society has just had a splendid picnic in Candace
Milliken's barn.
Our name is the B.O.S.S., and not a single boy in the village has
been able to guess it. It means Braid Over Shoulder Society, and
that is the sign. All the members wear one of their braids over
the right shoulder in front; the president's tied with red ribbon
(I am the president) and all the rest tied with blue.
To attract the attention of another member when in company or at
a public place we take the braid between the thumb and little
finger and stand carelessly on one leg. This is the Secret Signal
and the password is Sobb (B.O.S.S. spelled backwards) which was
my idea and is thought rather uncommon.
One of the rules of the B.O.S.S. is that any member may be
required to tell her besetting sin at any meeting, if asked to do
so by a majority of the members.
This was Candace Milliken's idea and much opposed by everybody,
but when it came to a vote so many of the girls were afraid of
offending Candace that they agreed because there was nobody
else's father and mother who would let us picnic in their barn
and use their plow, harrow, grindstone, sleigh, carryall, pung,
sled, and wheelbarrow, which we did and injured hardly anything.
They asked me to tell my besetting sin at the very first meeting,
and it nearly killed me to do it because it is such a common
greedy one. It is that I can't bear to call the other girls when
I have found a thick spot when we are out berrying in the summer
time.
After I confessed, which made me dreadfullyashamed, every one of
the girls seemed surprised and said they had never noticed that
one but had each thought of something very different that I would
be sure to think was my besetting sin. Then Emma Jane said that
rather than tell hers she would resign from the Society and miss
the picnic. So it made so much trouble that Candace gave up. We
struck out the rule from the constitution and I had told my sin
for nothing.
The reason we named ourselves the B.O.S.S. is that Minnie Smellie
has had her head shaved after scarlet fever and has no braid, so
she can't be a member.
I don't want her for a member but I can't be happy thinking she
will feel slighted, and it takes away half the pleasure of
belonging to the Society myself and being president.
That, I think, is the principal trouble about doing mean and
unkind things; that you can't do wrong and feel right, or be bad
and feel good. If you only could you could do anything that came
into your mind yet always be happy.
Minnie Smellie spoils everything she comes into but I suppose we
other girls must either have our hair shaved and call ourselves
The Baldheadians or let her be some kind of a special officer in
the B.O.S.S.
She might be the B.I.T.U.D. member (Braid in the Upper Drawer),
for there is where Mrs. Smellie keeps it now that it is cut off.
WINTER THOUGHTS
March, 187--
It is not such a cold day for March and I am up in the barn
chamber with my coat and hood on and Aunt Jane's waterproof and
my mittens.
After I do three pages I am going to hide away this book in the
haymow till spring.
Perhaps they get made into icicles on the way but I do not seem
to have any thoughts in the winter time. The barn chamber is full
of thoughts in warm weather. The sky gives them to me, and the
trees and flowers, and the birds, and the river; but now it is
always gray and nipping, the branches are bare and the river is
frozen.
It is too cold to write in my bedroom but while we still kept an
open fire I had a few thoughts, but now there is an air-tight
stove in the dining room where we sit, and we seem so close
together, Aunt Miranda, Aunt Jane and I that I don't like to
write in my book for fear they will ask me to read out loud my
secret thoughts.
I have just read over the first part of my Thought Book and I
have outgrown it all, just exactly as I have outgrown my last
year's drab cashmere.
It is very queer how anybody can change so fast in a few months,
but I remember that Emma Jane's cat had kittens the day my book
was bought at Watson's store. Mrs. Perkins kept the prettiest
white one, Abijah Flagg drowning all the others.
It seems strange to me that cats will go on having kittens when
they know what becomes of them! We were very sad about it, but
Mrs. Perkins said it was the way of the world and how things had
to be.
I cannot help being glad that they do not do the same with
children, or John and Jenny Mira Mark and me would all have had
stones tied to our necks and been dropped into the deepest part
of Sunny Brook, for Hannah and Fanny are the only truly handsome
ones in the family.
Mrs. Perkins says I dress up well, but never being dressed up it
does not matter much. At least they didn't wait to dress up the
kittens to see how they would improve, before drowning them, but
decided right away.
Emma Jane's kitten that was born the same day this book was is
now quite an old cat who knows the way of the world herself, and
how things have to be, for she has had one batch of kittens
drowned already.
So perhaps it is not strange that my Thought Book seems so
babyish and foolish to me when I think of all I have gone through
and the millions of things I have learned, and how much better I
spell than I did ten months ago.
My fingers are cold through the mittens, so good-bye dear Thought
Book, friend of my childhood, now so far far behind me!
I will hide you in the haymow where you'll be warm and cosy all
the long winter and where nobody can find you again in the summer
time but your affectionate author,
Rebecca Rowena Randall.
Fourth Chronicle
A TRAGEDY IN MILLINERY
I
Emma Jane Perkins's new winter dress was a blue and green Scotch
plaid poplin, trimmed with narrow green velvet-ribbon and steel
nail-heads. She had a gray jacket of thick furry cloth with large
steel buttons up the front, a pair of green kid gloves, and a
gray felt hat with an encircling band of bright green feathers.
The band began in front with a bird's head and ended behind with
a bird's tail, and angels could have desired no more beautiful
toilette. That was her opinion, and it was shared to the full by
Rebecca.
But Emma Jane, as Rebecca had once described her to Mr. Adam
Ladd, was a rich blacksmith's daughter, and she, Rebecca, was a
little half-orphan from a mortgaged farm "up Temperance way,"
dependent upon her spinster aunts for board, clothes, and
schooling. Scotch plaid poplins were manifestly not for her, but
dark-colored woolen stuffs were, and mittens, and last winter's
coats and furs.
And how about hats? Was there hope in store for her there? she
wondered, as she walked home from the Perkins house, full of
admiration for Emma Jane's winter outfit, and loyally trying to
keep that admiration free from wicked envy. Her red-winged black
hat was her second best, and although it was shabby she still
liked it, but it would never do for church, even in Aunt
Miranda's strange and never-to-be-comprehended views of suitable
raiment.
There was a brown felt turban in existence, if one could call it
existence when it had been rained on, snowed on, and hailed on
for two seasons; but the trimmings had at any rate perished quite
off the face of the earth, that was one comfort!
Emma Jane had said, rather indiscreetly, that at the village
milliner's at Milliken's Mills there was a perfectlyelegant pink
breast to be had, a breast that began in a perfectlyelegant
solferino and terminated in a perfectlyelegant magenta; two
colors much in vogue at that time. If the old brown hat was to be
her portion yet another winter, would Aunt Miranda conceal its
deficiencies from a carping world beneath the shaded solferino
breast? WOULD she, that was the question?
Filled with these perplexing thoughts, Rebecca entered the brick
house, hung up her hood in the entry, and went into the
dining-room.
Miss Jane was not there, but Aunt Miranda sat by the window with
her lap full of sewing things, and a chair piled with pasteboard
boxes by her side. In one hand was the ancient, battered, brown
felt turban, and in the other were the orange and black porcupine
to match together somehow; they're all pow'ful onlikely--the
prince feller with the glass slipper, and the hull bunch; but
jest the same you kind o' gulp em all down in a lump. But land,
Rebecky, nobody'd swaller that there village maiden o' your'n,
and as for what's-his-name Littlefield, that come out o' them
bushes, such a feller never 'd a' be'n IN bushes! No, Rebecky,
you're the smartest little critter there is in this township, and
you beat your Uncle Jerry all holler when it comes to usin' a
lead pencil, but I say that ain't no true Riverboro story! Look
at the way they talk! What was that' bout being BETROTHED'?"
"Betrothed is a genteel word for engaged to be married,"
explained the crushed and chastened author; and it was fortunate
the doting old man did not notice her eyes in the twilight, or he
might have known that tears were not far away.
"Well, that's all right, then; I'm as ignorant as Cooper's cow
when it comes to the dictionary. How about what's-his-name
callin' the girl 'Naysweet'?"
"I thought myself that sounded foolish,:" confessed Rebecca; "but
it's what the Doctor calls Cora when he tries to persuade her not
to quarrel with his mother who comes to live with them. I know
they don't say it in Riverboro or Temperance, but I thought
perhaps it was Boston talk."
"Well, it ain't!" asserted Mr. Cobb decisively. "I've druv Boston
men up in the stage from Milltown many's the time, and none of em
ever said Naysweet to me, nor nothin'like it. They talked like
folks, every mother's son of em! If I'd a' had that
what's-his-name on the harricane deck' o' the stage and he tried
any naysweetin' on me, I'd a' pitched him into the cornfield,
side o' the road. I guess you ain't growed up enough for that
kind of a story, Rebecky, for your poetry can't be beat in York
County, that's sure, and your compositions are good enough to
read out loud in town meetin' any day!"
Rebecca brightened up a little and bade the old couple her usual
affectionate good night, but she descended the hill in a saddened
mood. When she reached the bridge the sun, a ball of red fire,
was setting behind Squire Bean's woods. As she looked, it shone
full on the broad, still bosom of the river, and for one perfect
instant the trees on the shores were reflected, all swimming in a
sea of pink. Leaning over the rail, she watched the light fade
from crimson to carmine, from carmine to rose, from rose to
amber, and from amber to gray. Then withdrawing Lancelot or the
Parted Lovers from her apron pocket, she tore the pages into bits
and dropped them into the water below with a sigh.
"Uncle Jerry never said a word about the ending!" she thought;
"and that was so nice!"
And she was right; but while Uncle Jerry was an illuminating
critic when it came to the actions and language of his Riverboro
neighbors, he had no power to direct the young mariner when she
"followed the gleam," and used her imagination.
OUR SECRET SOCIETY
November, 187--
Our Secret society has just had a splendid picnic in Candace
Milliken's barn.
Our name is the B.O.S.S., and not a single boy in the village has
been able to guess it. It means Braid Over Shoulder Society, and
that is the sign. All the members wear one of their braids over
the right shoulder in front; the president's tied with red ribbon
(I am the president) and all the rest tied with blue.
To attract the attention of another member when in company or at
a public place we take the braid between the thumb and little
finger and stand carelessly on one leg. This is the Secret Signal
and the password is Sobb (B.O.S.S. spelled backwards) which was
my idea and is thought rather uncommon.
One of the rules of the B.O.S.S. is that any member may be
required to tell her besetting sin at any meeting, if asked to do
so by a majority of the members.
This was Candace Milliken's idea and much opposed by everybody,
but when it came to a vote so many of the girls were afraid of
offending Candace that they agreed because there was nobody
else's father and mother who would let us picnic in their barn
and use their plow, harrow, grindstone, sleigh, carryall, pung,
sled, and wheelbarrow, which we did and injured hardly anything.
They asked me to tell my besetting sin at the very first meeting,
and it nearly killed me to do it because it is such a common
greedy one. It is that I can't bear to call the other girls when
I have found a thick spot when we are out berrying in the summer
time.
After I confessed, which made me dreadfullyashamed, every one of
the girls seemed surprised and said they had never noticed that
one but had each thought of something very different that I would
be sure to think was my besetting sin. Then Emma Jane said that
rather than tell hers she would resign from the Society and miss
the picnic. So it made so much trouble that Candace gave up. We
struck out the rule from the constitution and I had told my sin
for nothing.
The reason we named ourselves the B.O.S.S. is that Minnie Smellie
has had her head shaved after scarlet fever and has no braid, so
she can't be a member.
I don't want her for a member but I can't be happy thinking she
will feel slighted, and it takes away half the pleasure of
belonging to the Society myself and being president.
That, I think, is the principal trouble about doing mean and
unkind things; that you can't do wrong and feel right, or be bad
and feel good. If you only could you could do anything that came
into your mind yet always be happy.
Minnie Smellie spoils everything she comes into but I suppose we
other girls must either have our hair shaved and call ourselves
The Baldheadians or let her be some kind of a special officer in
the B.O.S.S.
She might be the B.I.T.U.D. member (Braid in the Upper Drawer),
for there is where Mrs. Smellie keeps it now that it is cut off.
WINTER THOUGHTS
March, 187--
It is not such a cold day for March and I am up in the barn
chamber with my coat and hood on and Aunt Jane's waterproof and
my mittens.
After I do three pages I am going to hide away this book in the
haymow till spring.
Perhaps they get made into icicles on the way but I do not seem
to have any thoughts in the winter time. The barn chamber is full
of thoughts in warm weather. The sky gives them to me, and the
trees and flowers, and the birds, and the river; but now it is
always gray and nipping, the branches are bare and the river is
frozen.
It is too cold to write in my bedroom but while we still kept an
open fire I had a few thoughts, but now there is an air-tight
stove in the dining room where we sit, and we seem so close
together, Aunt Miranda, Aunt Jane and I that I don't like to
write in my book for fear they will ask me to read out loud my
secret thoughts.
I have just read over the first part of my Thought Book and I
have outgrown it all, just exactly as I have outgrown my last
year's drab cashmere.
It is very queer how anybody can change so fast in a few months,
but I remember that Emma Jane's cat had kittens the day my book
was bought at Watson's store. Mrs. Perkins kept the prettiest
white one, Abijah Flagg drowning all the others.
It seems strange to me that cats will go on having kittens when
they know what becomes of them! We were very sad about it, but
Mrs. Perkins said it was the way of the world and how things had
to be.
I cannot help being glad that they do not do the same with
children, or John and Jenny Mira Mark and me would all have had
stones tied to our necks and been dropped into the deepest part
of Sunny Brook, for Hannah and Fanny are the only truly handsome
ones in the family.
Mrs. Perkins says I dress up well, but never being dressed up it
does not matter much. At least they didn't wait to dress up the
kittens to see how they would improve, before drowning them, but
decided right away.
Emma Jane's kitten that was born the same day this book was is
now quite an old cat who knows the way of the world herself, and
how things have to be, for she has had one batch of kittens
drowned already.
So perhaps it is not strange that my Thought Book seems so
babyish and foolish to me when I think of all I have gone through
and the millions of things I have learned, and how much better I
spell than I did ten months ago.
My fingers are cold through the mittens, so good-bye dear Thought
Book, friend of my childhood, now so far far behind me!
I will hide you in the haymow where you'll be warm and cosy all
the long winter and where nobody can find you again in the summer
time but your affectionate author,
Rebecca Rowena Randall.
Fourth Chronicle
A TRAGEDY IN MILLINERY
I
Emma Jane Perkins's new winter dress was a blue and green Scotch
plaid poplin, trimmed with narrow green velvet-ribbon and steel
nail-heads. She had a gray jacket of thick furry cloth with large
steel buttons up the front, a pair of green kid gloves, and a
gray felt hat with an encircling band of bright green feathers.
The band began in front with a bird's head and ended behind with
a bird's tail, and angels could have desired no more beautiful
toilette. That was her opinion, and it was shared to the full by
Rebecca.
But Emma Jane, as Rebecca had once described her to Mr. Adam
Ladd, was a rich blacksmith's daughter, and she, Rebecca, was a
little half-orphan from a mortgaged farm "up Temperance way,"
dependent upon her spinster aunts for board, clothes, and
schooling. Scotch plaid poplins were manifestly not for her, but
dark-colored woolen stuffs were, and mittens, and last winter's
coats and furs.
And how about hats? Was there hope in store for her there? she
wondered, as she walked home from the Perkins house, full of
admiration for Emma Jane's winter outfit, and loyally trying to
keep that admiration free from wicked envy. Her red-winged black
hat was her second best, and although it was shabby she still
liked it, but it would never do for church, even in Aunt
Miranda's strange and never-to-be-comprehended views of suitable
raiment.
There was a brown felt turban in existence, if one could call it
existence when it had been rained on, snowed on, and hailed on
for two seasons; but the trimmings had at any rate perished quite
off the face of the earth, that was one comfort!
Emma Jane had said, rather indiscreetly, that at the village
milliner's at Milliken's Mills there was a perfectlyelegant pink
breast to be had, a breast that began in a perfectlyelegant
solferino and terminated in a perfectlyelegant magenta; two
colors much in vogue at that time. If the old brown hat was to be
her portion yet another winter, would Aunt Miranda conceal its
deficiencies from a carping world beneath the shaded solferino
breast? WOULD she, that was the question?
Filled with these perplexing thoughts, Rebecca entered the brick
house, hung up her hood in the entry, and went into the
dining-room.
Miss Jane was not there, but Aunt Miranda sat by the window with
her lap full of sewing things, and a chair piled with pasteboard
boxes by her side. In one hand was the ancient, battered, brown
felt turban, and in the other were the orange and black porcupine
- slipper [´slipə]
n.拖鞋 (初中英语单词) - maiden [´meidn] n.少女 a.未婚的 (初中英语单词)
- twilight [´twailait] n.黎明；黄昏 (初中英语单词)
- ignorant [´ignərənt] a.无知的，愚昧的 (初中英语单词)
- persuade [pə´sweid] v.(被)说服；使相信 (初中英语单词)
- poetry [´pəuitri] n.诗；诗意 (初中英语单词)
- squire [skwaiə] n.护卫，侍从；乡绅 (初中英语单词)
- dreadfully [dredfuli] ad.可怕地；糟透地 (初中英语单词)
- ashamed [ə´ʃeimd] a.惭愧；不好意思 (初中英语单词)
- resign [ri´zain] v.辞职；放弃；委托 (初中英语单词)
- constitution [,kɔnsti´tju:ʃən] n.宪法；体格；体质 (初中英语单词)
- scarlet [´skɑ:lit] n.猩红色 a.猩红的 (初中英语单词)
- principal [´prinsəpəl] a.主要的 n.负责人 (初中英语单词)
- kitten [´kitn] n.小猫 (初中英语单词)
- childhood [´tʃaildhud] n.幼年(时代)；早期 (初中英语单词)
- tragedy [´trædʒidi] n.悲剧；惨案；灾难 (初中英语单词)
- jacket [´dʒækit] n.茄克衫；外套 (初中英语单词)
- admiration [,ædmə´reiʃən] n.赞赏，钦佩 (初中英语单词)
- wicked [´wikid] a.邪恶的；不道德的 (初中英语单词)
- existence [ig´zistəns] n.存在；生存；生活 (初中英语单词)
- portion [´pɔ:ʃən] n.嫁妆；命运 vt.分配 (初中英语单词)
- conceal [kən´si:l] vt.藏；隐瞒 (初中英语单词)
- crimson [´krimzən] a.&n.深(紫)红(的) (高中英语单词)
- mariner [´mærinə] n.海员；水手 (高中英语单词)
- picnic [´piknik] n.郊游 vi.(去)野餐 (高中英语单词)
- carelessly [´kɛəlisli] ad.粗心地；疏忽地 (高中英语单词)
- chamber [´tʃeimbə] n.房间；议院；会议室 (高中英语单词)
- learned [´lə:nid] a.有学问的，博学的 (高中英语单词)
- affectionate [ə´fekʃənit] a.亲爱的 (高中英语单词)
- scotch [skɔtʃ] vt.&n.刻痕(于)；划伤 (高中英语单词)
- outfit [´aut,fit] n.装备 vt.供给；装备 (高中英语单词)
- shabby [´ʃæbi] a.(衣服)破旧的 (高中英语单词)
- perfectly [´pə:fiktli] ad.理想地；完美地 (高中英语单词)
- elegant [´eligənt] a.文雅的；优美的 (高中英语单词)
- sewing [´səuiŋ] n.缝纫；(书的)装订 (高中英语单词)
- cinderella [,sində´relə] n.灰姑娘 (英语四级单词)
- township [´taunʃip] n.乡；区 (英语四级单词)
- temperance [´tempərəns] n.节制；节欲；戒酒 (英语四级单词)
- bridge [bridʒ] n.桥(梁)；鼻梁；桥牌 (英语四级单词)
- setting [´setiŋ] n.安装；排字；布景 (英语四级单词)
- sleigh [slei] n.雪橇 vi.坐雪橇 (英语四级单词)
- woolen [´wulən] a.毛线的；毛织品的 (英语四级单词)
- trying [´traiiŋ] a.难堪的；费劲的 (英语四级单词)
- porcupine [´pɔ:kjupain] n.豪猪，箭猪 (英语四级单词)
- genteel [dʒen´ti:l] a.有教养的；文雅的 (英语六级单词)
- harrow [´hærəu] n.&v.耙(地) (英语六级单词)
- waterproof [´wɔ:təpru:f] a.防水的 n.防水物 (英语六级单词)
- manifestly [´mænifestli] ad.明显的 (英语六级单词)
- turban [´tə:bən] n.(穆斯林的)缠头巾 (英语六级单词)
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