章节正文
Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm
by Kate Douglas Wiggin
TO MY MOTHER
Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;
A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.
Wordsworth.
CONTENTS
I. "WE ARE SEVEN"
II. REBECCA'S RELATIONS
III. A DIFFERENCE IN HEARTS
IV. REBECCA'S POINT OF VIEW
V. WISDOM'S WAYS
VI. SUNSHINE IN A SHADY PLACE
VII. RIVERBORO SECRETS
VIII. COLOR OF ROSE
IX ASHES OF ROSES
X. RAINBOW BRIDGES
XI. "THE STIRRING OF THE POWERS"
XII. "SEE THE PALE MARTYR"
XIII. SNOW-WHITE; ROSE-RED
XIV. MR. ALADDIN
XV. THE BANQUET LAMP
XVI. SEASONS OF GROWTH
XVII. GRAY DAYS AND GOLD
XVIII. REBECCA REPRESENTS THE FAMILY
XIX. DEACON ISRAEL'S SUCCESSOR
XX. A CHANGE OF HEART
XXI. THE SKY LINE WIDENS
XXII. CLOVER BLOSSOMS AND SUNFLOWERS
XXIII. THE HILL DIFFICULTY
XXIV. ALADDIN RUBS HIS LAMP
XXV. ROSES OF JOY
XXVI. OVER THE TEACUPS
XXVII. "THE VISION SPLENDID"
XXVIII. "TH' INEVITABLE YOKE"
XXIX. MOTHER AND DAUGHTER
XXX. "GOOD-BY, SUNNYBROOK!"
XXXI. AUNT MIRANDA'S APOLOGY
REBECCA
OF SUNNYBROOK FARM
REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM
"WE ARE SEVEN"
The old stage coach was rumbling along
the dusty road that runs from Maplewood
to Riverboro. The day was as warm
as midsummer, though it was only the middle of
May, and Mr. Jeremiah Cobb was favoring the
horses as much as possible, yet never losing sight
of the fact that he carried the mail. The hills were
many, and the reins lay loosely in his hands as he
lolled back in his seat and extended one foot and
leg luxuriously over the dashboard. His brimmed
hat of worn felt was well pulled over his eyes, and
he revolved a quid of tobacco in his left cheek.
There was one passenger in the coach,--a small
dark-haired person in a glossy buff calico dress.
She was so slender and so stiffly starched that
she slid from space to space on the leather cushions,
though she braced herself against the middle
seat with her feet and extended her cotton-gloved
hands on each side, in order to maintain some sort
of balance. Whenever the wheels sank farther than
usual into a rut, or jolted suddenly over a stone,
she bounded involuntarily into the air, came down
again, pushed back her funny little straw hat, and
picked up or settled more firmly a small pink sun
shade, which seemed to be her chief responsibility,
--unless we except a bead purse, into which
she looked whenever the condition of the roads
would permit, finding great apparent satisfaction
in that its precious contents neither disappeared
nor grew less. Mr. Cobb guessed nothing of these
harassing details of travel, his business being to
carry people to their destinations, not, necessarily,
to make them comfortable on the way. Indeed he
had forgotten the very existence of this one
unnoteworthy little passenger.
When he was about to leave the post-office in
Maplewood that morning, a woman had alighted
from a wagon, and coming up to him, inquired
whether this were the Riverboro stage, and if he
were Mr. Cobb. Being answered in the affirmative,
she nodded to a child who was eagerly waiting
for the answer, and who ran towards her as if she
feared to be a moment too late. The child might
have been ten or eleven years old perhaps, but
whatever the number of her summers, she had an
air of being small for her age. Her mother helped
her into the stage coach, deposited a bundle and
a bouquet of lilacs beside her, superintended the
"roping on" behind of an old hair trunk, and finally
paid the fare, counting out the silver with great
care.
"I want you should take her to my sisters'
in Riverboro," she said. "Do you know Mi-
randy and Jane Sawyer? They live in the brick
house."
Lord bless your soul, he knew 'em as well as
if he'd made 'em!
"Well, she's going there, and they're expecting
her. Will you keep an eye on her, please? If she
can get out anywhere and get with folks, or get
anybody in to keep her company, she'll do it.
Good-by, Rebecca; try not to get into any mischief,
and sit quiet, so you'll look neat an' nice when
you get there. Don't be any trouble to Mr. Cobb.
--You see, she's kind of excited.--We came on
the cars from Temperance yesterday, slept all night
at my cousin's, and drove from her house--eight
miles it is--this morning."
"Good-by, mother, don't worry; you know it
isn't as if I hadn't traveled before."
The woman gave a short sardonic laugh and said
in an explanatory way to Mr. Cobb, "She's been to
Wareham and stayed over night; that isn't much
to be journey-proud on!"
"It WAS TRAVELING, mother," said the child
eagerly and willfully. "It was leaving the farm, and
putting up lunch in a basket, and a little riding
and a little steam cars, and we carried our nightgowns."
"Don't tell the whole village about it, if we did,"
said the mother, interrupting the reminiscences of
this experienced voyager. "Haven't I told you
before," she whispered, in a last attempt at
discipline, "that you shouldn't talk about night
gowns and stockings and--things like that, in a
loud tone of voice, and especially when there's
men folks round?"
"I know, mother, I know, and I won't. All I
want to say is"--here Mr. Cobb gave a cluck,
slapped the reins, and the horses started sedately
on their daily task--"all I want to say is that it
is a journey when"--the stage was really under
way now and Rebecca had to put her head out of
the window over the door in order to finish her
sentence--"it IS a journey when you carry a
nightgown!"
The objectionable word, uttered in a high treble,
floated back to the offended ears of Mrs. Randall,
who watched the stage out of sight, gathered up
her packages from the bench at the store door,
and stepped into the wagon that had been standing
at the hitching-post. As she turned the horse's
head towards home she rose to her feet for a
moment, and shading her eyes with her hand, looked
at a cloud of dust in the dim distance.
"Mirandy'll have her hands full, I guess," she
said to herself; "but I shouldn't wonder if it would
be the making of Rebecca."
All this had been half an hour ago, and the sun,
the heat, the dust, the contemplation of errands to
be done in the great metropolis of Milltown, had
lulled Mr. Cobb's never active mind into complete
oblivion as to his promise of keeping an eye on
Rebecca.
Suddenly he heard a small voice above the rattle
and rumble of the wheels and the creaking of the
harness. At first he thought it was a cricket, a tree
toad, or a bird, but having determined the direction
from which it came, he turned his head over his
shoulder and saw a small shape hanging as far out
of the window as safety would allow. A long black
braid of hair swung with the motion of the coach;
the child held her hat in one hand and with the
other made ineffectual attempts to stab the driver
with her microscopic sunshade.
"Please let me speak!" she called.
Mr. Cobb drew up the horses obediently.
"Does it cost any more to ride up there with
you?" she asked. "It's so slippery and shiny down
here, and the stage is so much too big for me, that
I rattle round in it till I'm 'most black and blue.
And the windows are so small I can only see pieces
of things, and I've 'most broken my neck stretching
round to find out whether my trunk has fallen
off the back. It's my mother's trunk, and she's
very choice of it."
Mr. Cobb waited until this flow of conversation,
or more properlyspeaking this flood of criticism,
had ceased, and then said jocularly:--
"You can come up if you want to; there ain't
no extry charge to sit side o' me." Whereupon he
helped her out, "boosted" her up to the front seat,
and resumed his own place.
Rebecca sat down carefully, smoothing her dress
under her with painstaking precision, and putting
her sunshade under its extended folds between the
driver and herself. This done she pushed back her
hat, pulled up her darned white cotton gloves, and
said delightedly:--
"Oh! this is better! This is like traveling! I
am a real passenger now, and down there I felt like
our setting hen when we shut her up in a coop. I
hope we have a long, long ways to go?"
"Oh! we've only just started on it," Mr. Cobb
responded genially; "it's more 'n two hours."
"Only two hours," she sighed "That will be
by Kate Douglas Wiggin
TO MY MOTHER
Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;
A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.
Wordsworth.
CONTENTS
I. "WE ARE SEVEN"
II. REBECCA'S RELATIONS
III. A DIFFERENCE IN HEARTS
IV. REBECCA'S POINT OF VIEW
V. WISDOM'S WAYS
VI. SUNSHINE IN A SHADY PLACE
VII. RIVERBORO SECRETS
VIII. COLOR OF ROSE
IX ASHES OF ROSES
X. RAINBOW BRIDGES
XI. "THE STIRRING OF THE POWERS"
XII. "SEE THE PALE MARTYR"
XIII. SNOW-WHITE; ROSE-RED
XIV. MR. ALADDIN
XV. THE BANQUET LAMP
XVI. SEASONS OF GROWTH
XVII. GRAY DAYS AND GOLD
XVIII. REBECCA REPRESENTS THE FAMILY
XIX. DEACON ISRAEL'S SUCCESSOR
XX. A CHANGE OF HEART
XXI. THE SKY LINE WIDENS
XXII. CLOVER BLOSSOMS AND SUNFLOWERS
XXIII. THE HILL DIFFICULTY
XXIV. ALADDIN RUBS HIS LAMP
XXV. ROSES OF JOY
XXVI. OVER THE TEACUPS
XXVII. "THE VISION SPLENDID"
XXVIII. "TH' INEVITABLE YOKE"
XXIX. MOTHER AND DAUGHTER
XXX. "GOOD-BY, SUNNYBROOK!"
XXXI. AUNT MIRANDA'S APOLOGY
REBECCA
OF SUNNYBROOK FARM
REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM
"WE ARE SEVEN"
The old stage coach was rumbling along
the dusty road that runs from Maplewood
to Riverboro. The day was as warm
as midsummer, though it was only the middle of
May, and Mr. Jeremiah Cobb was favoring the
horses as much as possible, yet never losing sight
of the fact that he carried the mail. The hills were
many, and the reins lay loosely in his hands as he
lolled back in his seat and extended one foot and
leg luxuriously over the dashboard. His brimmed
hat of worn felt was well pulled over his eyes, and
he revolved a quid of tobacco in his left cheek.
There was one passenger in the coach,--a small
dark-haired person in a glossy buff calico dress.
She was so slender and so stiffly starched that
she slid from space to space on the leather cushions,
though she braced herself against the middle
seat with her feet and extended her cotton-gloved
hands on each side, in order to maintain some sort
of balance. Whenever the wheels sank farther than
usual into a rut, or jolted suddenly over a stone,
she bounded involuntarily into the air, came down
again, pushed back her funny little straw hat, and
picked up or settled more firmly a small pink sun
shade, which seemed to be her chief responsibility,
--unless we except a bead purse, into which
she looked whenever the condition of the roads
would permit, finding great apparent satisfaction
in that its precious contents neither disappeared
nor grew less. Mr. Cobb guessed nothing of these
harassing details of travel, his business being to
carry people to their destinations, not, necessarily,
to make them comfortable on the way. Indeed he
had forgotten the very existence of this one
unnoteworthy little passenger.
When he was about to leave the post-office in
Maplewood that morning, a woman had alighted
from a wagon, and coming up to him, inquired
whether this were the Riverboro stage, and if he
were Mr. Cobb. Being answered in the affirmative,
she nodded to a child who was eagerly waiting
for the answer, and who ran towards her as if she
feared to be a moment too late. The child might
have been ten or eleven years old perhaps, but
whatever the number of her summers, she had an
air of being small for her age. Her mother helped
her into the stage coach, deposited a bundle and
a bouquet of lilacs beside her, superintended the
"roping on" behind of an old hair trunk, and finally
paid the fare, counting out the silver with great
care.
"I want you should take her to my sisters'
in Riverboro," she said. "Do you know Mi-
randy and Jane Sawyer? They live in the brick
house."
Lord bless your soul, he knew 'em as well as
if he'd made 'em!
"Well, she's going there, and they're expecting
her. Will you keep an eye on her, please? If she
can get out anywhere and get with folks, or get
anybody in to keep her company, she'll do it.
Good-by, Rebecca; try not to get into any mischief,
and sit quiet, so you'll look neat an' nice when
you get there. Don't be any trouble to Mr. Cobb.
--You see, she's kind of excited.--We came on
the cars from Temperance yesterday, slept all night
at my cousin's, and drove from her house--eight
miles it is--this morning."
"Good-by, mother, don't worry; you know it
isn't as if I hadn't traveled before."
The woman gave a short sardonic laugh and said
in an explanatory way to Mr. Cobb, "She's been to
Wareham and stayed over night; that isn't much
to be journey-proud on!"
"It WAS TRAVELING, mother," said the child
eagerly and willfully. "It was leaving the farm, and
putting up lunch in a basket, and a little riding
and a little steam cars, and we carried our nightgowns."
"Don't tell the whole village about it, if we did,"
said the mother, interrupting the reminiscences of
this experienced voyager. "Haven't I told you
before," she whispered, in a last attempt at
discipline, "that you shouldn't talk about night
gowns and stockings and--things like that, in a
loud tone of voice, and especially when there's
men folks round?"
"I know, mother, I know, and I won't. All I
want to say is"--here Mr. Cobb gave a cluck,
slapped the reins, and the horses started sedately
on their daily task--"all I want to say is that it
is a journey when"--the stage was really under
way now and Rebecca had to put her head out of
the window over the door in order to finish her
sentence--"it IS a journey when you carry a
nightgown!"
The objectionable word, uttered in a high treble,
floated back to the offended ears of Mrs. Randall,
who watched the stage out of sight, gathered up
her packages from the bench at the store door,
and stepped into the wagon that had been standing
at the hitching-post. As she turned the horse's
head towards home she rose to her feet for a
moment, and shading her eyes with her hand, looked
at a cloud of dust in the dim distance.
"Mirandy'll have her hands full, I guess," she
said to herself; "but I shouldn't wonder if it would
be the making of Rebecca."
All this had been half an hour ago, and the sun,
the heat, the dust, the contemplation of errands to
be done in the great metropolis of Milltown, had
lulled Mr. Cobb's never active mind into complete
oblivion as to his promise of keeping an eye on
Rebecca.
Suddenly he heard a small voice above the rattle
and rumble of the wheels and the creaking of the
harness. At first he thought it was a cricket, a tree
toad, or a bird, but having determined the direction
from which it came, he turned his head over his
shoulder and saw a small shape hanging as far out
of the window as safety would allow. A long black
braid of hair swung with the motion of the coach;
the child held her hat in one hand and with the
other made ineffectual attempts to stab the driver
with her microscopic sunshade.
"Please let me speak!" she called.
Mr. Cobb drew up the horses obediently.
"Does it cost any more to ride up there with
you?" she asked. "It's so slippery and shiny down
here, and the stage is so much too big for me, that
I rattle round in it till I'm 'most black and blue.
And the windows are so small I can only see pieces
of things, and I've 'most broken my neck stretching
round to find out whether my trunk has fallen
off the back. It's my mother's trunk, and she's
very choice of it."
Mr. Cobb waited until this flow of conversation,
or more properlyspeaking this flood of criticism,
had ceased, and then said jocularly:--
"You can come up if you want to; there ain't
no extry charge to sit side o' me." Whereupon he
helped her out, "boosted" her up to the front seat,
and resumed his own place.
Rebecca sat down carefully, smoothing her dress
under her with painstaking precision, and putting
her sunshade under its extended folds between the
driver and herself. This done she pushed back her
hat, pulled up her darned white cotton gloves, and
said delightedly:--
"Oh! this is better! This is like traveling! I
am a real passenger now, and down there I felt like
our setting hen when we shut her up in a coop. I
hope we have a long, long ways to go?"
"Oh! we've only just started on it," Mr. Cobb
responded genially; "it's more 'n two hours."
"Only two hours," she sighed "That will be
- twilight [´twailait]
n.黎明；黄昏 (初中英语单词) - cheerful [´tʃiəful] a.快乐的；高兴的 (初中英语单词)
- startle [´stɑ:tl] vt.使吃惊，使惊跳 (初中英语单词)
- sunshine [´sʌnʃain] n.日光，阳光 (初中英语单词)
- vision [´viʒən] n.视觉；想象力；幻影 (初中英语单词)
- tobacco [tə´bækəu] n.烟草(叶)；卷烟 (初中英语单词)
- slender [´slendə] a.细长的；微薄的 (初中英语单词)
- maintain [mein´tein] vt.维持；保持；继续 (初中英语单词)
- whenever [wen´evə] conj.&ad.无论何时 (初中英语单词)
- firmly [´fə:mli] ad.坚固地，稳定地 (初中英语单词)
- apparent [ə´pærənt] a.显然的；表面上的 (初中英语单词)
- contents [´kɔ:ntents] n.容纳物；要旨 (初中英语单词)
- existence [ig´zistəns] n.存在；生存；生活 (初中英语单词)
- eagerly [´i:gəli] ad.渴望地，急切地 (初中英语单词)
- bundle [´bʌndl] n.包，捆；包袱(裹) (初中英语单词)
- anywhere [´eniweə] ad.无论何处；任何地方 (初中英语单词)
- yesterday [´jestədi] n.&ad.昨天；前不久 (初中英语单词)
- rattle [´rætl] n.嘎吱声 (初中英语单词)
- properly [´prɔpəli] ad.适当地；严格地 (初中英语单词)
- charge [tʃɑ:dʒ] v.收费；冲锋 n.费用 (初中英语单词)
- rainbow [´reinbəu] n.彩虹 (高中英语单词)
- banquet [´bæŋkwit] n.宴会，盛宴 (高中英语单词)
- clover [´kləuvə] n.三叶草 (高中英语单词)
- inevitable [i´nevitəbəl] a.不可避免的 (高中英语单词)
- stiffly [´stifli] ad.硬；顽固地 (高中英语单词)
- finding [´faindiŋ] n.发现物；判断；结果 (高中英语单词)
- post-office [´pəust-´ɔfis] a.邮政的 (高中英语单词)
- rumble [´rʌmbəl] v.(使)隆隆响 n.隆隆声 (高中英语单词)
- cricket [´krikit] n.蟋蟀；板球 (高中英语单词)
- hanging [´hæŋiŋ] n.绞刑 a.悬挂着的 (高中英语单词)
- motion [´məuʃən] n.手势 vt.打手势 (高中英语单词)
- slippery [´slipəri] a.滑的；不稳固的 (高中英语单词)
- stirring [´stə:riŋ] a.活跃的；热闹的 (英语四级单词)
- midsummer [´mid,sʌmə] n.仲夏；夏至 (英语四级单词)
- loosely [´lu:sli] ad.松散地 (英语四级单词)
- calico [´kælikəu] n.白棉布；印花布 (英语四级单词)
- bouquet [bu:´kei] n.花束；恭维话 (英语四级单词)
- temperance [´tempərəns] n.节制；节欲；戒酒 (英语四级单词)
- traveled [´trævəld] a.见面广的；旅客多的 (英语四级单词)
- experienced [ik´spiəriənst] a.有经验的；熟练的 (英语四级单词)
- contemplation [,kɔntem´pleiʃən] n.注视；冥想；打算 (英语四级单词)
- metropolis [mi´trɔpəlis] n.首都；大城市 (英语四级单词)
- whereupon [,weərə´pɔn] ad.在什么上面；因此 (英语四级单词)
- precision [pri´siʒən] n.精密(度) a.精确的 (英语四级单词)
- setting [´setiŋ] n.安装；排字；布景 (英语四级单词)
- deacon [´di:kən] n.(教会的)执事 (英语六级单词)
- extended [iks´tendid] a.伸长的；广大的 (英语六级单词)
- glossy [´glɔsi] a.光滑的，有光泽的 (英语六级单词)
- involuntarily [in´vɔləntərili] ad.不 自觉地 (英语六级单词)
- microscopic [,maikrə´skɔpik] a.(象)显微镜的 (英语六级单词)
- speaking [´spi:kiŋ] n.说话 a.发言的 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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