章节正文
pious style of hairdressing, fully as effective if not
as startling as the first. These antics were solely
the result of nervousirritation, a mood born of Miss
Miranda Sawyer's stiff, grim, and martial attitude.
The remembrance of Rebecca was so vivid that their
sister Aurelia's letter was something of a shock to
the quiet, elderly spinsters of the brick house; for
it said that Hannah could not possibly be spared
for a few years yet, but that Rebecca would come
as soon as she could be made ready; that the offer
was most thankfully appreciated, and that the regular
schooling and church privileges, as well as the
influence of the Sawyer home, would doubtless be
"the making of Rebecca"
III
A DIFFERENCE IN HEARTS
I don' know as I cal'lated to be the makin' of any
child," Miranda had said as she folded Aurelia's
letter and laid it in the light-stand drawer.
"I s'posed, of course, Aurelia would send us the
one we asked for, but it's just like her to palm off
that wild young one on somebody else."
"You remember we said that Rebecca or even
Jenny might come, in case Hannah couldn't,"
interposed Jane.
"I know we did, but we hadn't any notion it would
turn out that way," grumbled Miranda.
"She was a mite of a thing when we saw her
three years ago," ventured Jane; "she's had time
to improve."
"And time to grow worse!"
"Won't it be kind of a privilege to put her on the
right track?" asked Jane timidly.
"I don' know about the privilege part; it'll be
considerable of a chore, I guess. If her mother hain't
got her on the right track by now, she won't take to
it herself all of a sudden."
This depressed and depressing frame of mind had
lasted until the eventful day dawned on which Rebecca
was to arrive.
"If she makes as much work after she comes as
she has before, we might as well give up hope of
ever gettin' any rest," sighed Miranda as she hung
the dish towels on the barberry bushes at the side
door.
"But we should have had to clean house, Rebecca
or no Rebecca," urged Jane; "and I can't see why
you've scrubbed and washed and baked as you have
for that one child, nor why you've about bought out
Watson's stock of dry goods."
"I know Aurelia if you don't," responded
Miranda. "I've seen her house, and I've seen that
batch o' children, wearin' one another's clothes and
never carin' whether they had 'em on right sid' out
or not; I know what they've had to live and dress
on, and so do you. That child will like as not come
here with a passel o' things borrowed from the
rest o' the family. She'll have Hannah's shoes and
John's undershirts and Mark's socks most likely.
I suppose she never had a thimble on her finger in
her life, but she'll know the feelin' o' one before
she's ben here many days. I've bought a piece of
unbleached muslin and a piece o' brown gingham
for her to make up; that'll keep her busy. Of
course she won't pick up anything after herself; she
probably never see a duster, and she'll be as hard
to train into our ways as if she was a heathen."
"She'll make a dif'rence," acknowledged Jane,
"but she may turn out more biddable 'n we think."
"She'll mind when she's spoken to, biddable or
not," remarked Miranda with a shake of the last
towel.
Miranda Sawyer had a heart, of course, but she
had never used it for any other purpose than the
pumping and circulating of blood. She was just,
conscientious, economical, industrious; a regular
attendant at church and Sunday-school, and a member
of the State Missionary and Bible societies, but
in the presence of all these chilly virtues you longed
for one warm little fault, or lacking that, one likable
failing, something to make you sure she was
thoroughly alive. She had never had any education
other than that of the neighborhood district school,
for her desires and ambitions had all pointed to the
management of the house, the farm, and the dairy.
Jane, on the other hand, had gone to an academy,
and also to a boarding-school for young ladies; so
had Aurelia; and after all the years that had elapsed
there was still a slight difference in language and
in manner between the elder and the two younger
sisters.
Jane, too, had had the inestimable advantage of a
sorrow; not the natural grief at the loss of her aged
father and mother, for she had been content to let
them go; but something far deeper. She was engaged
to marry young Tom Carter, who had nothing
to marry on, it is true, but who was sure to have,
some time or other. Then the war broke out. Tom
enlisted at the first call. Up to that time Jane had
loved him with a quiet, friendly sort of affection, and
had given her country a mild motion" target="_blank" title="n.感情；情绪；激动">emotion of the same
sort. But the strife, the danger, the anxiety of the
time, set new currents of feeling in motion. Life became
something other than the three meals a day,
the round of cooking, washing, sewing, and church
going. Personal gossip vanished from the village
conversation. Big things took the place of trifling
ones,--sacred sorrows of wives and mothers, pangs
of fathers and husbands, self-denials, sympathies,
new desire to bear one another's burdens. Men
and women grew fast in those days of the nation's
trouble and danger, and Jane awoke from the vague
dull dream she had hitherto called life to new hopes,
new fears, new purposes. Then after a year's anxiety,
a year when one never looked in the newspaper
without dread and sickness of suspense, came
the telegramsaying that Tom was wounded; and
without so much as asking Miranda's leave, she
packed her trunk and started for the South. She
was in time to hold Tom's hand through hours of
pain; to show him for once the heart of a prim New
England girl when it is ablaze with love and grief;
to put her arms about him so that he could have a
home to die in, and that was all;--all, but it served.
It carried her through weary months of nursing
--nursing of other soldiers for Tom's dear sake; it
sent her home a better woman; and though she had
never left Riverboro in all the years that lay between,
and had grown into the counterfeit presentment of
her sister and of all other thin, spare, New England
spinsters, it was something of a counterfeit, and
underneath was still the faint echo of that wild heart-
beat of her girlhood. Having learned the trick of
beating and loving and suffering, the poor faithful
heart persisted, although it lived on memories
and carried on its sentimental operations mostly in
secret.
"You're soft, Jane," said Miranda once; "you
allers was soft, and you allers will be. If 't wa'n't
for me keeping you stiffened up, I b'lieve you'd
leak out o' the house into the dooryard."
It was already past the appointed hour for Mr.
Cobb and his coach to be lumbering down the
street.
"The stage ought to be here," said Miranda,
glancing nervously at the tall clock for the twentieth
time. "I guess everything 's done. I've
tacked up two thick towels back of her washstand
and put a mat under her slop-jar; but children are
awful hard on furniture. I expect we sha'n't know
this house a year from now."
Jane's frame of mind was naturally depressed
and timorous, having been affected by Miranda's
gloomy presages of evil to come. The only difference
between the sisters in this matter was that
while Miranda only wondered how they could endure
Rebecca, Jane had flashes of inspiration in
which she wondered how Rebecca would endure
them. It was in one of these flashes that she ran
up the back stairs to put a vase of apple blossoms
and a red tomato-pincushion on Rebecca's bureau.
The stage rumbled to the side door of the brick
house, and Mr. Cobb handed Rebecca out like a
real lady passenger. She alighted with great
circumspection, put the bunch of faded flowers in her
aunt Miranda's hand, and received her salute; it
could hardly be called a kiss without injuring the
fair name of that commodity.
"You needn't 'a' bothered to bring flowers,"
remarked that gracious and tactful lady; "the garden
's always full of 'em here when it comes time."
Jane then kissed Rebecca, giving a somewhat
better imitation of the real thing than her sister.
"Put the trunk in the entry, Jeremiah, and we'll
get it carried upstairs this afternoon," she said.
"I'll take it up for ye now, if ye say the word,
girls."
"No, no; don't leave the horses; somebody'll
be comin' past, and we can call 'em in."
"Well, good-by, Rebecca; good-day, Mirandy 'n'
Jane. You've got a lively little girl there. I guess
she'll be a first-rate company keeper."
Miss Sawyer shuddered openly at the adjective
"lively" as applied to a child; her belief being that
though children might be seen, if absolutely necessary,
they certainly should never be heard if she
could help it. "We're not much used to noise, Jane
and me," she remarked acidly.
Mr. Cobb saw that he had taken the wrong tack,
but he was too unused to argument to explain himself
readily, so he drove away, trying to think by
what safer word than "lively" he might have
described his interesting little passenger.
"I'll take you up and show you your room,
Rebecca," Miss Miranda said. "Shut the mosquito
nettin' door tight behind you, so 's to keep the flies
out; it ain't flytime yet, but I want you to start
right; take your passel along with ye and then you
won't have to come down for it; always make your
head save your heels. Rub your feet on that braided
rug; hang your hat and cape in the entry there as
as startling as the first. These antics were solely
the result of nervousirritation, a mood born of Miss
Miranda Sawyer's stiff, grim, and martial attitude.
The remembrance of Rebecca was so vivid that their
sister Aurelia's letter was something of a shock to
the quiet, elderly spinsters of the brick house; for
it said that Hannah could not possibly be spared
for a few years yet, but that Rebecca would come
as soon as she could be made ready; that the offer
was most thankfully appreciated, and that the regular
schooling and church privileges, as well as the
influence of the Sawyer home, would doubtless be
"the making of Rebecca"
III
A DIFFERENCE IN HEARTS
I don' know as I cal'lated to be the makin' of any
child," Miranda had said as she folded Aurelia's
letter and laid it in the light-stand drawer.
"I s'posed, of course, Aurelia would send us the
one we asked for, but it's just like her to palm off
that wild young one on somebody else."
"You remember we said that Rebecca or even
Jenny might come, in case Hannah couldn't,"
interposed Jane.
"I know we did, but we hadn't any notion it would
turn out that way," grumbled Miranda.
"She was a mite of a thing when we saw her
three years ago," ventured Jane; "she's had time
to improve."
"And time to grow worse!"
"Won't it be kind of a privilege to put her on the
right track?" asked Jane timidly.
"I don' know about the privilege part; it'll be
considerable of a chore, I guess. If her mother hain't
got her on the right track by now, she won't take to
it herself all of a sudden."
This depressed and depressing frame of mind had
lasted until the eventful day dawned on which Rebecca
was to arrive.
"If she makes as much work after she comes as
she has before, we might as well give up hope of
ever gettin' any rest," sighed Miranda as she hung
the dish towels on the barberry bushes at the side
door.
"But we should have had to clean house, Rebecca
or no Rebecca," urged Jane; "and I can't see why
you've scrubbed and washed and baked as you have
for that one child, nor why you've about bought out
Watson's stock of dry goods."
"I know Aurelia if you don't," responded
Miranda. "I've seen her house, and I've seen that
batch o' children, wearin' one another's clothes and
never carin' whether they had 'em on right sid' out
or not; I know what they've had to live and dress
on, and so do you. That child will like as not come
here with a passel o' things borrowed from the
rest o' the family. She'll have Hannah's shoes and
John's undershirts and Mark's socks most likely.
I suppose she never had a thimble on her finger in
her life, but she'll know the feelin' o' one before
she's ben here many days. I've bought a piece of
unbleached muslin and a piece o' brown gingham
for her to make up; that'll keep her busy. Of
course she won't pick up anything after herself; she
probably never see a duster, and she'll be as hard
to train into our ways as if she was a heathen."
"She'll make a dif'rence," acknowledged Jane,
"but she may turn out more biddable 'n we think."
"She'll mind when she's spoken to, biddable or
not," remarked Miranda with a shake of the last
towel.
Miranda Sawyer had a heart, of course, but she
had never used it for any other purpose than the
pumping and circulating of blood. She was just,
conscientious, economical, industrious; a regular
attendant at church and Sunday-school, and a member
of the State Missionary and Bible societies, but
in the presence of all these chilly virtues you longed
for one warm little fault, or lacking that, one likable
failing, something to make you sure she was
thoroughly alive. She had never had any education
other than that of the neighborhood district school,
for her desires and ambitions had all pointed to the
management of the house, the farm, and the dairy.
Jane, on the other hand, had gone to an academy,
and also to a boarding-school for young ladies; so
had Aurelia; and after all the years that had elapsed
there was still a slight difference in language and
in manner between the elder and the two younger
sisters.
Jane, too, had had the inestimable advantage of a
sorrow; not the natural grief at the loss of her aged
father and mother, for she had been content to let
them go; but something far deeper. She was engaged
to marry young Tom Carter, who had nothing
to marry on, it is true, but who was sure to have,
some time or other. Then the war broke out. Tom
enlisted at the first call. Up to that time Jane had
loved him with a quiet, friendly sort of affection, and
had given her country a mild motion" target="_blank" title="n.感情；情绪；激动">emotion of the same
sort. But the strife, the danger, the anxiety of the
time, set new currents of feeling in motion. Life became
something other than the three meals a day,
the round of cooking, washing, sewing, and church
going. Personal gossip vanished from the village
conversation. Big things took the place of trifling
ones,--sacred sorrows of wives and mothers, pangs
of fathers and husbands, self-denials, sympathies,
new desire to bear one another's burdens. Men
and women grew fast in those days of the nation's
trouble and danger, and Jane awoke from the vague
dull dream she had hitherto called life to new hopes,
new fears, new purposes. Then after a year's anxiety,
a year when one never looked in the newspaper
without dread and sickness of suspense, came
the telegramsaying that Tom was wounded; and
without so much as asking Miranda's leave, she
packed her trunk and started for the South. She
was in time to hold Tom's hand through hours of
pain; to show him for once the heart of a prim New
England girl when it is ablaze with love and grief;
to put her arms about him so that he could have a
home to die in, and that was all;--all, but it served.
It carried her through weary months of nursing
--nursing of other soldiers for Tom's dear sake; it
sent her home a better woman; and though she had
never left Riverboro in all the years that lay between,
and had grown into the counterfeit presentment of
her sister and of all other thin, spare, New England
spinsters, it was something of a counterfeit, and
underneath was still the faint echo of that wild heart-
beat of her girlhood. Having learned the trick of
beating and loving and suffering, the poor faithful
heart persisted, although it lived on memories
and carried on its sentimental operations mostly in
secret.
"You're soft, Jane," said Miranda once; "you
allers was soft, and you allers will be. If 't wa'n't
for me keeping you stiffened up, I b'lieve you'd
leak out o' the house into the dooryard."
It was already past the appointed hour for Mr.
Cobb and his coach to be lumbering down the
street.
"The stage ought to be here," said Miranda,
glancing nervously at the tall clock for the twentieth
time. "I guess everything 's done. I've
tacked up two thick towels back of her washstand
and put a mat under her slop-jar; but children are
awful hard on furniture. I expect we sha'n't know
this house a year from now."
Jane's frame of mind was naturally depressed
and timorous, having been affected by Miranda's
gloomy presages of evil to come. The only difference
between the sisters in this matter was that
while Miranda only wondered how they could endure
Rebecca, Jane had flashes of inspiration in
which she wondered how Rebecca would endure
them. It was in one of these flashes that she ran
up the back stairs to put a vase of apple blossoms
and a red tomato-pincushion on Rebecca's bureau.
The stage rumbled to the side door of the brick
house, and Mr. Cobb handed Rebecca out like a
real lady passenger. She alighted with great
circumspection, put the bunch of faded flowers in her
aunt Miranda's hand, and received her salute; it
could hardly be called a kiss without injuring the
fair name of that commodity.
"You needn't 'a' bothered to bring flowers,"
remarked that gracious and tactful lady; "the garden
's always full of 'em here when it comes time."
Jane then kissed Rebecca, giving a somewhat
better imitation of the real thing than her sister.
"Put the trunk in the entry, Jeremiah, and we'll
get it carried upstairs this afternoon," she said.
"I'll take it up for ye now, if ye say the word,
girls."
"No, no; don't leave the horses; somebody'll
be comin' past, and we can call 'em in."
"Well, good-by, Rebecca; good-day, Mirandy 'n'
Jane. You've got a lively little girl there. I guess
she'll be a first-rate company keeper."
Miss Sawyer shuddered openly at the adjective
"lively" as applied to a child; her belief being that
though children might be seen, if absolutely necessary,
they certainly should never be heard if she
could help it. "We're not much used to noise, Jane
and me," she remarked acidly.
Mr. Cobb saw that he had taken the wrong tack,
but he was too unused to argument to explain himself
readily, so he drove away, trying to think by
what safer word than "lively" he might have
described his interesting little passenger.
"I'll take you up and show you your room,
Rebecca," Miss Miranda said. "Shut the mosquito
nettin' door tight behind you, so 's to keep the flies
out; it ain't flytime yet, but I want you to start
right; take your passel along with ye and then you
won't have to come down for it; always make your
head save your heels. Rub your feet on that braided
rug; hang your hat and cape in the entry there as
- effective [i´fektiv]
a.有效的；有力的 (初中英语单词) - nervous [´nə:vəs] a.神经的；神经过敏的 (初中英语单词)
- doubtless [´dautlis] ad.无疑地；大概，多半 (初中英语单词)
- privilege [´privilidʒ] n.特权 vt.给....特权 (初中英语单词)
- spoken [´spəukən] speak的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- chilly [´tʃili] a.凉飕飕的 (初中英语单词)
- neighborhood [´neibəhud] n.邻居；邻近；附近 (初中英语单词)
- pointed [´pɔintid] a.尖(锐)的；中肯的 (初中英语单词)
- advantage [əd´vɑ:ntidʒ] n.优势；利益 (初中英语单词)
- affection [ə´fekʃən] n.友爱；慈爱 (初中英语单词)
- emotion [i´məuʃən] n.感情；情绪；激动 (初中英语单词)
- anxiety [æŋ´zaiəti] n.挂念；渴望；焦虑的事 (初中英语单词)
- sickness [´siknis] n.生病；呕吐，恶心 (初中英语单词)
- telegram [´teligræm] n.电报 (初中英语单词)
- suffering [´sʌfəriŋ] n.痛苦；灾害 (初中英语单词)
- mostly [´məustli] ad.主要地；多半；通常 (初中英语单词)
- lumbering [´lʌmbəriŋ] n.伐木(业) (初中英语单词)
- salute [sə´lu:t] n.&v.招呼；行礼；敬礼 (初中英语单词)
- gracious [´greiʃəs] a.和蔼可亲的；任慈的 (初中英语单词)
- lively [´laivli] a.活泼的；热烈的 (初中英语单词)
- belief [bi´li:f] n.相信；信仰，信条 (初中英语单词)
- absolutely [´æbsəlu:tli] ad.绝对地；确实 (初中英语单词)
- argument [´ɑ:gjumənt] n.辩论；争论；论证 (初中英语单词)
- startling [´stɑ:tliŋ] a.惊人的 (高中英语单词)
- remembrance [ri´membrəns] n.记忆(力)；回忆 (高中英语单词)
- industrious [in´dʌstriəs] a.勤勉的，刻苦的 (高中英语单词)
- missionary [´miʃənəri] a.传教(士)的 n.传教士 (高中英语单词)
- strife [straif] n.竞争；吵架；冲突 (高中英语单词)
- motion [´məuʃən] n.手势 vt.打手势 (高中英语单词)
- sewing [´səuiŋ] n.缝纫；(书的)装订 (高中英语单词)
- gossip [´gɔsip] n.&vi.说闲话；聊天 (高中英语单词)
- hitherto [,hiðə´tu:] ad.至今，迄今 (高中英语单词)
- saying [´seiŋ, ´sei-iŋ] n.言语；言论；格言 (高中英语单词)
- learned [´lə:nid] a.有学问的，博学的 (高中英语单词)
- loving [´lʌviŋ] a.爱的，有爱情的 (高中英语单词)
- inspiration [,inspi´reiʃən] n.鼓舞；灵感；启发 (高中英语单词)
- imitation [,imi´teiʃən] n.模仿；仿制品；赝品 (高中英语单词)
- openly [´əupənli] ad.公开地；直率地 (高中英语单词)
- martial [´mɑ:ʃəl] a.战争的；象军人的 (英语四级单词)
- elderly [´eldəli] a. 较老的，年长的 (英语四级单词)
- muslin [´mʌzlin] n.平纹细布，薄纱织物 (英语四级单词)
- economical [,i:kə´nɔmikəl] a.节俭的；经济的 (英语四级单词)
- counterfeit [´kauntəfit] a.伪造的 v.&n.伪造 (英语四级单词)
- sentimental [,senti´mentl] a.感伤的；多愁善感的 (英语四级单词)
- nervously [´nə:vəsli] ad.神经质地；胆怯地 (英语四级单词)
- upstairs [,ʌp´steəz] ad.在楼上 a.楼上的 (英语四级单词)
- trying [´traiiŋ] a.难堪的；费劲的 (英语四级单词)
- irritation [,iri´teiʃən] n.(被)激怒；疼痛处 (英语六级单词)
- depressed [di´prest] a.消沉的；萧条的 (英语六级单词)
- thimble [´θimbəl] n.顶针；嵌环；套管 (英语六级单词)
- lacking [´lækiŋ] a.缺少的，没有的 (英语六级单词)
- suspense [sə´spens] n.悬挂；悬虑不安 (英语六级单词)
- affected [ə´fektid] a.做作的；假装的 (英语六级单词)
- applied [ə´plaid] a.实用的，应用的 (英语六级单词)
- unused [,ʌn´ju:zd] a.不用的；未消耗的 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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