章节正文
and when his old friend went up to him and laid his hand on his side,
he whinnied for joy, and laid his big head on his master's breast.
This settled the matter. The coachman's arms were round the
horse's neck in a moment, and he fairly broke down and cried.
The cab-master had never been so fond of a horse himself as to hug
him like that, but he saw in a moment how it was. And he must
have been a good-hearted fellow, for I never heard of such an idea
coming into the head of any other man with a horse to sell:
instead of putting something on to the price because he was now
pretty sure of selling him, he actually took a pound off what he
had meant to ask for him, saying to himself it was a shame to part
old friends.
Diamond's father, as soon as he came to himself, turned and asked
how much he wanted for the horse.
"I see you're old friends," said the owner.
"It's my own old Diamond. I liked him far the best of the pair,
though the other was good. You ain't got him too, have you?"
"No; nothing in the stable to match him there."
"I believe you," said the coachman. "But you'll be wanting a long
price for him, I know."
"No, not so much. I bought him cheap, and as I say, he ain't
for my work."
The end of it was that Diamond's father bought old Diamond again,
along with a four-wheeled cab. And as there were some rooms to be
had over the stable, he took them, wrote to his wife to come home,
and set up as a cabman.
CHAPTER XV
THE MEWS
IT WAS late in the afternoon when Diamond and his mother and the baby
reached London. I was so full of Diamond that I forgot to tell you
a baby had arrived in the meantime. His father was waiting for them
with his own cab, but they had not told Diamond who the horse was;
for his father wanted to enjoy the pleasure of his surprise when he
found it out. He got in with his mother without looking at the horse,
and his father having put up Diamond's carpet-bag and his mother's
little trunk, got upon the box himself and drove off; and Diamond
was quite proud of riding home in his father's own carriage.
But when he got to the mews, he could not help being a little dismayed
at first; and if he had never been to the back of the north wind,
I am afraid he would have cried a little. But instead of that,
he said to himself it was a fine thing all the old furniture was there.
And instead of helping his mother to be miserable at the change,
he began to find out all the advantages of the place; for every
place has some advantages, and they are always better worth knowing
than the disadvantages. Certainly the weather was depressing,
for a thick, dull, persistent rain was falling by the time they
reached home. But happily the weather is very changeable;
and besides, there was a good fire burning in the room, which their
neighbour with the drunken husband had attended to for them; and the
tea-things were put out, and the kettle was boiling on the fire.
And with a good fire, and tea and bread and butter, things cannot
be said to be miserable.
Diamond's father and mother were, notwithstanding, rather miserable,
and Diamond began to feel a kind of darkness beginning to spread
over his own mind. But the same moment he said to himself,
"This will never do. I can't give in to this. I've been to the back
of the north wind. Things go right there, and so I must try to get
things to go right here. I've got to fight the miserable things.
They shan't make me miserable if I can help it." I do not mean
that he thought these very words. They are perhaps too grown-up
for him to have thought, but they represent the kind of thing that
was in his heart and his head. And when heart and head go together,
nothing can stand before them.
"What nice bread and butter this is!" said Diamond.
"I'm glad you like it, my dear" said his father. "I bought
the butter myself at the little shop round the corner."
"It's very nice, thank you, father. Oh, there's baby waking!
I'll take him."
"Sit still, Diamond," said his mother. "Go on with your bread
and butter. You're not strong enough to lift him yet."
So she took the baby herself, and set him on her knee. Then Diamond
began to amuse him, and went on till the little fellow was shrieking
with laughter. For the baby's world was his mother's arms;
and the drizzling rain, and the dreary mews, and even his father's
troubled face could not touch him. What cared baby for the loss
of a hundred situations? Yet neither father nor mother thought
him hard-hearted because he crowed and laughed in the middle
of their troubles. On the contrary, his crowing and laughing
were infectious. His little heart was so full of merriment that it
could not hold it all, and it ran over into theirs. Father and
mother began to laugh too, and Diamond laughed till he had a fit
of coughing which frightened his mother, and made them all stop.
His father took the baby, and his mother put him to bed.
But it was indeed a change to them all, not only from Sandwich,
but from their old place, instead of the great river where the huge
barges with their mighty brown and yellow sails went tacking
from side to side like little pleasure-skiffs, and where the long
thin boats shot past with eight and sometimes twelve rowers,
their windows now looked out upon a dirty paved yard. And there
was no garden more for Diamond to run into when he pleased, with gay
flowers about his feet, and solemn sun-filled trees over his head.
Neither was there a wooden wall at the back of his bed with a hole
in it for North Wind to come in at when she liked. Indeed, there was
such a high wall, and there were so many houses about the mews,
that North Wind seldom got into the place at all, except when something
must be done, and she had a grand cleaning out like other housewives;
while the partition at the head of Diamond's new bed only divided
it from the room occupied by a cabman who drank too much beer,
and came home chiefly to quarrel with his wife and pinch his children.
It was dreadful to Diamond to hear the scolding and the crying.
But it could not make him miserable, because he had been at the back of
the north wind.
If my reader find it hard to believe that Diamond should be so good,
he must remember that he had been to the back of the north wind.
If he never knew a boy so good, did he ever know a boy that had been
to the back of the north wind? It was not in the least strange
of Diamond to behave as he did; on the contrary, it was thoroughly
sensible of him.
We shall see how he got on.
CHAPTER XVI
DIAMOND MAKES A BEGINNING
THE wind blew loud, but Diamond slept a deep sleep, and never heard it.
My own impression is that every time when Diamond slept well and
remembered nothing about it in the morning, he had been all that night
at the back of the north wind. I am almost sure that was how he
woke so refreshed, and felt so quiet and hopeful all the day.
Indeed he said this much, though not to me--that always when he
woke from such a sleep there was a something in his mind, he could
not tell what--could not tell whether it was the last far-off sounds
of the river dying away in the distance, or some of the words
of the endless song his mother had read to him on the sea-shore.
Sometimes he thought it must have been the twittering of the swallows--
over the shallows, you, know; but it may have been the chirping
of the dingy sparrows picking up their breakfast in the yard--
how can I tell? I don't know what I know, I only know what I think;
and to tell the truth, I am more for the swallows than the sparrows.
When he knew he was coming awake, he would sometimes try hard
to keep hold of the words of what seemed a new song, one he had
not heard before--a song in which the words and the music somehow
appeared to be all one; but even when he thought he had got them
well fixed in his mind, ever as he came awaker--as he would say--
one line faded away out of it, and then another, and then another,
till at last there was nothing left but some lovely picture of water
or grass or daisies, or something else very common, but with all the
commonness polished off it, and the lovely soul of it, which people
so seldom see, and, alas! yet seldomer believe in, shining out.
But after that he would sing the oddest, loveliest little songs
to the baby--of his own making, his mother said; but Diamond said he
did not make them; they were made somewhere inside him, and he knew
nothing about them till they were coming out.
When he woke that first morning he got up at once, saying to himself,
"I've been ill long enough, and have given a great deal of trouble;
I must try and be of use now, and help my mother." When he went into
her room he found her lighting the fire, and his father just getting
out of bed. They had only the one room, besides the little one,
not much more than a closet, in which Diamond slept. He began at
once to set things to rights, but the baby waking up, he took him,
and nursed him till his mother had got the breakfast ready.
She was looking gloomy, and his father was silent; and indeed except
Diamond had done all he possibly could to keep out the misery
that was trying to get in at doors and windows, he too would have
grown miserable, and then they would have been all miserable together.
But to try to make others comfortable is the only way to get right
comfortable ourselves, and that comes partly of not being able
to think so much about ourselves when we are helping other people.
For our Selves will always do pretty well if we don't pay them
too much attention. Our Selves are like some little children who
will be happy enough so long as they are left to their own games,
but when we begin to interfere with them, and make them presents
of too nice playthings, or too many sweet things, they begin at once
to fret and spoil.
"Why, Diamond, child!" said his mother at last, "you're as good to
your mother as if you were a girl--nursing the baby, and toasting
the bread, and sweeping up the hearth! I declare a body would
think you had been among the fairies."
Could Diamond have had greater praise or greater pleasure?
You see when he forgot his Self his mother took care of his Self,
and loved and praised his Self. Our own praises poison our Selves,
and puff and swell them up, till they lose all shape and beauty,
and become like great toadstools. But the praises of father or mother
do our Selves good, and comfort them and make them beautiful.
They never do them any harm. If they do any harm, it comes of our
mixing some of our own praises with them, and that turns them nasty
and slimy and poisonous.
When his father had finished his breakfast, which he did rather
in a hurry, he got up and went down into the yard to get out his
horse and put him to the cab.
"Won't you come and see the cab, Diamond?" he said.
"Yes, please, father--if mother can spare me a minute," answered Diamond.
"Bless the child! I don't want him," said his mother cheerfully.
But as he was following his father out of the door, she called
him back.
"Diamond, just hold the baby one minute. I have something to say
to your father."
So Diamond sat down again, took the baby in his lap, and began poking
his face into its little body, laughing and singing all the while,
so that the baby crowed like a little bantam. And what he sang was
something like this--such nonsense to those that couldn't understand
it! but not to the baby, who got all the good in the world out of it:--
baby's a-sleeping wake up baby for all the swallows are the merriest
fellows and have the yellowest children who would go sleeping
and snore like a gaby disturbing his mother and father and brother
and all a-boring their ears with his snoring snoring snoring for
himself and no other for himself in particular wake up baby sit up
perpendicular hark to the gushing hark to the rushing where the
sheep are the woolliest and the lambs the unruliest and their tails
the whitest and their eyes the brightest and baby's the bonniest
and baby's the funniest and baby's the shiniest and baby's the tiniest
and baby's the merriest and baby's the worriest of all the lambs
that plague their dams and mother's the whitest of all the dams
that feed the lambs that go crop-cropping without stop-stopping
he whinnied for joy, and laid his big head on his master's breast.
This settled the matter. The coachman's arms were round the
horse's neck in a moment, and he fairly broke down and cried.
The cab-master had never been so fond of a horse himself as to hug
him like that, but he saw in a moment how it was. And he must
have been a good-hearted fellow, for I never heard of such an idea
coming into the head of any other man with a horse to sell:
instead of putting something on to the price because he was now
pretty sure of selling him, he actually took a pound off what he
had meant to ask for him, saying to himself it was a shame to part
old friends.
Diamond's father, as soon as he came to himself, turned and asked
how much he wanted for the horse.
"I see you're old friends," said the owner.
"It's my own old Diamond. I liked him far the best of the pair,
though the other was good. You ain't got him too, have you?"
"No; nothing in the stable to match him there."
"I believe you," said the coachman. "But you'll be wanting a long
price for him, I know."
"No, not so much. I bought him cheap, and as I say, he ain't
for my work."
The end of it was that Diamond's father bought old Diamond again,
along with a four-wheeled cab. And as there were some rooms to be
had over the stable, he took them, wrote to his wife to come home,
and set up as a cabman.
CHAPTER XV
THE MEWS
IT WAS late in the afternoon when Diamond and his mother and the baby
reached London. I was so full of Diamond that I forgot to tell you
a baby had arrived in the meantime. His father was waiting for them
with his own cab, but they had not told Diamond who the horse was;
for his father wanted to enjoy the pleasure of his surprise when he
found it out. He got in with his mother without looking at the horse,
and his father having put up Diamond's carpet-bag and his mother's
little trunk, got upon the box himself and drove off; and Diamond
was quite proud of riding home in his father's own carriage.
But when he got to the mews, he could not help being a little dismayed
at first; and if he had never been to the back of the north wind,
I am afraid he would have cried a little. But instead of that,
he said to himself it was a fine thing all the old furniture was there.
And instead of helping his mother to be miserable at the change,
he began to find out all the advantages of the place; for every
place has some advantages, and they are always better worth knowing
than the disadvantages. Certainly the weather was depressing,
for a thick, dull, persistent rain was falling by the time they
reached home. But happily the weather is very changeable;
and besides, there was a good fire burning in the room, which their
neighbour with the drunken husband had attended to for them; and the
tea-things were put out, and the kettle was boiling on the fire.
And with a good fire, and tea and bread and butter, things cannot
be said to be miserable.
Diamond's father and mother were, notwithstanding, rather miserable,
and Diamond began to feel a kind of darkness beginning to spread
over his own mind. But the same moment he said to himself,
"This will never do. I can't give in to this. I've been to the back
of the north wind. Things go right there, and so I must try to get
things to go right here. I've got to fight the miserable things.
They shan't make me miserable if I can help it." I do not mean
that he thought these very words. They are perhaps too grown-up
for him to have thought, but they represent the kind of thing that
was in his heart and his head. And when heart and head go together,
nothing can stand before them.
"What nice bread and butter this is!" said Diamond.
"I'm glad you like it, my dear" said his father. "I bought
the butter myself at the little shop round the corner."
"It's very nice, thank you, father. Oh, there's baby waking!
I'll take him."
"Sit still, Diamond," said his mother. "Go on with your bread
and butter. You're not strong enough to lift him yet."
So she took the baby herself, and set him on her knee. Then Diamond
began to amuse him, and went on till the little fellow was shrieking
with laughter. For the baby's world was his mother's arms;
and the drizzling rain, and the dreary mews, and even his father's
troubled face could not touch him. What cared baby for the loss
of a hundred situations? Yet neither father nor mother thought
him hard-hearted because he crowed and laughed in the middle
of their troubles. On the contrary, his crowing and laughing
were infectious. His little heart was so full of merriment that it
could not hold it all, and it ran over into theirs. Father and
mother began to laugh too, and Diamond laughed till he had a fit
of coughing which frightened his mother, and made them all stop.
His father took the baby, and his mother put him to bed.
But it was indeed a change to them all, not only from Sandwich,
but from their old place, instead of the great river where the huge
barges with their mighty brown and yellow sails went tacking
from side to side like little pleasure-skiffs, and where the long
thin boats shot past with eight and sometimes twelve rowers,
their windows now looked out upon a dirty paved yard. And there
was no garden more for Diamond to run into when he pleased, with gay
flowers about his feet, and solemn sun-filled trees over his head.
Neither was there a wooden wall at the back of his bed with a hole
in it for North Wind to come in at when she liked. Indeed, there was
such a high wall, and there were so many houses about the mews,
that North Wind seldom got into the place at all, except when something
must be done, and she had a grand cleaning out like other housewives;
while the partition at the head of Diamond's new bed only divided
it from the room occupied by a cabman who drank too much beer,
and came home chiefly to quarrel with his wife and pinch his children.
It was dreadful to Diamond to hear the scolding and the crying.
But it could not make him miserable, because he had been at the back of
the north wind.
If my reader find it hard to believe that Diamond should be so good,
he must remember that he had been to the back of the north wind.
If he never knew a boy so good, did he ever know a boy that had been
to the back of the north wind? It was not in the least strange
of Diamond to behave as he did; on the contrary, it was thoroughly
sensible of him.
We shall see how he got on.
CHAPTER XVI
DIAMOND MAKES A BEGINNING
THE wind blew loud, but Diamond slept a deep sleep, and never heard it.
My own impression is that every time when Diamond slept well and
remembered nothing about it in the morning, he had been all that night
at the back of the north wind. I am almost sure that was how he
woke so refreshed, and felt so quiet and hopeful all the day.
Indeed he said this much, though not to me--that always when he
woke from such a sleep there was a something in his mind, he could
not tell what--could not tell whether it was the last far-off sounds
of the river dying away in the distance, or some of the words
of the endless song his mother had read to him on the sea-shore.
Sometimes he thought it must have been the twittering of the swallows--
over the shallows, you, know; but it may have been the chirping
of the dingy sparrows picking up their breakfast in the yard--
how can I tell? I don't know what I know, I only know what I think;
and to tell the truth, I am more for the swallows than the sparrows.
When he knew he was coming awake, he would sometimes try hard
to keep hold of the words of what seemed a new song, one he had
not heard before--a song in which the words and the music somehow
appeared to be all one; but even when he thought he had got them
well fixed in his mind, ever as he came awaker--as he would say--
one line faded away out of it, and then another, and then another,
till at last there was nothing left but some lovely picture of water
or grass or daisies, or something else very common, but with all the
commonness polished off it, and the lovely soul of it, which people
so seldom see, and, alas! yet seldomer believe in, shining out.
But after that he would sing the oddest, loveliest little songs
to the baby--of his own making, his mother said; but Diamond said he
did not make them; they were made somewhere inside him, and he knew
nothing about them till they were coming out.
When he woke that first morning he got up at once, saying to himself,
"I've been ill long enough, and have given a great deal of trouble;
I must try and be of use now, and help my mother." When he went into
her room he found her lighting the fire, and his father just getting
out of bed. They had only the one room, besides the little one,
not much more than a closet, in which Diamond slept. He began at
once to set things to rights, but the baby waking up, he took him,
and nursed him till his mother had got the breakfast ready.
She was looking gloomy, and his father was silent; and indeed except
Diamond had done all he possibly could to keep out the misery
that was trying to get in at doors and windows, he too would have
grown miserable, and then they would have been all miserable together.
But to try to make others comfortable is the only way to get right
comfortable ourselves, and that comes partly of not being able
to think so much about ourselves when we are helping other people.
For our Selves will always do pretty well if we don't pay them
too much attention. Our Selves are like some little children who
will be happy enough so long as they are left to their own games,
but when we begin to interfere with them, and make them presents
of too nice playthings, or too many sweet things, they begin at once
to fret and spoil.
"Why, Diamond, child!" said his mother at last, "you're as good to
your mother as if you were a girl--nursing the baby, and toasting
the bread, and sweeping up the hearth! I declare a body would
think you had been among the fairies."
Could Diamond have had greater praise or greater pleasure?
You see when he forgot his Self his mother took care of his Self,
and loved and praised his Self. Our own praises poison our Selves,
and puff and swell them up, till they lose all shape and beauty,
and become like great toadstools. But the praises of father or mother
do our Selves good, and comfort them and make them beautiful.
They never do them any harm. If they do any harm, it comes of our
mixing some of our own praises with them, and that turns them nasty
and slimy and poisonous.
When his father had finished his breakfast, which he did rather
in a hurry, he got up and went down into the yard to get out his
horse and put him to the cab.
"Won't you come and see the cab, Diamond?" he said.
"Yes, please, father--if mother can spare me a minute," answered Diamond.
"Bless the child! I don't want him," said his mother cheerfully.
But as he was following his father out of the door, she called
him back.
"Diamond, just hold the baby one minute. I have something to say
to your father."
So Diamond sat down again, took the baby in his lap, and began poking
his face into its little body, laughing and singing all the while,
so that the baby crowed like a little bantam. And what he sang was
something like this--such nonsense to those that couldn't understand
it! but not to the baby, who got all the good in the world out of it:--
baby's a-sleeping wake up baby for all the swallows are the merriest
fellows and have the yellowest children who would go sleeping
and snore like a gaby disturbing his mother and father and brother
and all a-boring their ears with his snoring snoring snoring for
himself and no other for himself in particular wake up baby sit up
perpendicular hark to the gushing hark to the rushing where the
sheep are the woolliest and the lambs the unruliest and their tails
the whitest and their eyes the brightest and baby's the bonniest
and baby's the funniest and baby's the shiniest and baby's the tiniest
and baby's the merriest and baby's the worriest of all the lambs
that plague their dams and mother's the whitest of all the dams
that feed the lambs that go crop-cropping without stop-stopping
- actually [´æktʃuəli]
ad.事实上；实际上 (初中英语单词) - stable [´steibəl] n.马棚 a.稳固的 (初中英语单词)
- meantime [´mi:ntaim] n.&ad.其间；同时 (初中英语单词)
- waiting [´weitiŋ] n.等候；伺候 (初中英语单词)
- miserable [´mizərəbəl] a.悲惨的；可怜的 (初中英语单词)
- drunken [´drʌŋkən] a.喝醉的；常醉的 (初中英语单词)
- kettle [´ketl] n.水壶 (初中英语单词)
- beginning [bi´giniŋ] n.开始，开端；起源 (初中英语单词)
- laughter [´lɑ:ftə] n.笑，笑声 (初中英语单词)
- contrary [´kɔntrəri] a.相反的 n.相反 (初中英语单词)
- solemn [´sɔləm] a.严肃的；隆重的 (初中英语单词)
- wooden [´wudn] a.木制的；呆板的 (初中英语单词)
- chiefly [´tʃi:fli] ad.主要地；尤其 (初中英语单词)
- dreadful [´dredful] a.可怕的；讨厌的 (初中英语单词)
- behave [bi´heiv] v.举止；表现；举止端正 (初中英语单词)
- impression [im´preʃən] n.印刷；印象；效果 (初中英语单词)
- closet [´klɔzit] n.橱；私室；盥洗室 (初中英语单词)
- partly [´pɑ:tli] ad.部分地；不完全地 (初中英语单词)
- interfere [,intə´fiə] vi.干涉；妨碍；打扰 (初中英语单词)
- poison [´pɔizən] n.毒物 v.毒害 a.有毒的 (初中英语单词)
- saying [´seiŋ, ´sei-iŋ] n.言语；言论；格言 (高中英语单词)
- persistent [pə´sistənt] a.坚持的；固执的 (高中英语单词)
- notwithstanding [,nɔtwiθ´stændiŋ] prep.&conj.虽然；还是 (高中英语单词)
- dreary [´driəri] a.阴郁的；枯燥无味的 (高中英语单词)
- infectious [in´fekʃəs] a.传染，传染(性)的 (高中英语单词)
- theirs [ðeəz] pron.他们的 (高中英语单词)
- mighty [´maiti] a.强有力的 ad.很 (高中英语单词)
- partition [pɑ:´tiʃən] n.分割；划分 (高中英语单词)
- gloomy [´glu:mi] a.昏暗的；忧郁的 (高中英语单词)
- sweeping [´swi:piŋ] a.掠过的 n.扫除；清除 (高中英语单词)
- nonsense [´nɔnsəns] n.胡说 int.胡说!废话 (高中英语单词)
- plague [pleig] n.瘟疫 vt.使...染疫 (高中英语单词)
- coachman [´kəutʃmən] n.赶马车人 (英语四级单词)
- merriment [´merimənt] n.欢乐 (英语四级单词)
- hopeful [´həupfəl] a.有希望的，激励人的 (英语四级单词)
- far-off [´fɑ:rɔ:f] a.远方的，遥远的 (英语四级单词)
- lighting [´laitiŋ] n.照明，发光 (英语四级单词)
- trying [´traiiŋ] a.难堪的；费劲的 (英语四级单词)
- wanting [´wɔntiŋ, wɑ:n-] a.短缺的；不足的 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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