章节正文
opera?" roared Edward, in a big, husky voice. He'd had more
since we saw him, but he walked straight as the Bishop himself,
and he's a dear little ramrod. "Ah!"--his eyes lit up at sight
of me--"ah, Miss--Miss--of course, I've met the young lady,
Henrietta, but hang me if I haven't forgotten her name."
"Miss--Miss Murieson," lied the old lady, glibly. "A--a
relative."
"Why, mummy!" I said reproachfully.
"There--there. It's only a joke. Isn't it a joke, Edward?" she
demanded, laughing uneasily.
"Joke?" he repeated with a heartybellow of laughter. "Best
kind of a joke, I call it, to find so pretty a girl right in your
own house, eh, Bishop?"
"Why does he call my father `Bishop', mummy?"
I couldn't help it. The fun of hearing the Dowager lie and
knowing the Bishop beside himself with the pain of deception was
too much for me. I could see she didn't dare trust her Edward
with my sad story.
"Ho! ho! The Bishop--that's good. No, my dear Miss Murieson, if
this lady's your mother, why, I must be--at least, I ought to be,
your father. As such, I'm going to have all the privileges of a
parent--bless me, if I'm not."
I don't suppose he'd have done it if he'd been sober, but
there's no telling, when you remember the reputation the Dowager
had given him. But he'd got no further than to put his arm around
me when both the Bishop and the Dowager flew to the rescue. My,
but they were shocked! I couldn't help wondering what they'd have
done if Edward had happened to see the Bishop in the same sort of
tableau earlier in the afternoon.
But I got a lucid interval just then, and distracted their
attention. I stood for a moment, my head bent as though I was
thinking deeply.
"I think I'll go now," I said at length. "I--I don't
understand exactly how I got here," I went on, looking from the
Bishop to the Dowager and back again, "or how I happened to miss
my father. I'm ever--so much obliged to you, and if you will give
me my hat, I'll take the next train back to college."
"You'll do nothing of the sort," said the Dowager, promptly.
"My dear, you're a sweet girl that's been studying too hard. You
must go to my room and rest--"
"And stay for dinner. Don't you care. Sometimes I don't know
how I get here myself." Edward winked jovially.
Well, I did. While the Dowager's back was turned, I gave him the
littlest one, in return for his. It made him drunker than ever.
"I think," said the Bishop, grimly, with a significant glance
at the Dowager, as he turned just then and saw the old cock
ogling me, "the young lady is wiser than we. I'll take her to
the station--"
The station! Ugh! Not Nance Olden, with the red coat still on.
"Impossible, my dear Bishop," interrupted the Dowager. "She
can't be permitted to go back on the train alone."
"Why, Miss--Miss Murieson, I'll see you back all the way to the
college door. Not at all, not at all. Charmed. First, we'll have
dinner--or, first I'll telephone out there and tell 'em you're
with us, so that if there's any rule or anything of that sort--"
The telephone! This wretched Edward with half his wits gave me
more trouble than the Bishop and the Dowager put together. She
jumped at the idea, and left the room, only to come back again to
whisper to me:
"What name, my dear?"
"What name? what name?" I repeated blankly. What name, indeed.
I wonder how "Nance Olden" would have done.
"Don't hurry, dear, don't perplex yourself," she whispered
anxiously, noting my bewilderment. "There's plenty of time, and
it makes no difference--not a particle, really."
I put my hand to my head.
"I can't think--I can't think. There's one girl has nervous
prostration, and her name's got mixed with mine, and I can't--"
"Hush, hush! Never mind. You shall come and lie down in my
room. You'll stay with us to-night, anyway, and we'll have a
doctor in, Bishop."
"That's right," assented the Bishop. "I'll go get him
myself."
"You--you're not going!" I cried in dismay. It was real.
I hated to see him go.
"Nonsense--'phone." It was Edward who went himself to
telephone for the doctor, and I saw my time getting short.
But the Bishop had to go, anyway. He looked out at his horses
shivering in front of the house, and the sight hurried him.
"My child," he said, taking my hand, "just let Mrs. Ramsay
take care of you to-night. Don't bother about anything, but just
rest. I'll see you in the morning," he went on, noticing that I
kind of clung to him. Well, I did. "Can't you remember what I
said to you in the carriage--that I wished you were my daughter.
I wish you were, indeed I do, and that I could take you home with
me and keep you, child."
"Then--to-night--if--when you pray--will you pray for me as if
I was--your own daughter?"
Tom Dorgan, you think no prayers but a priest's are any good,
you bigoted, snickering Catholic! I tell you if some day I cut
loose from you and start in over again, it'll be the Bishop's
prayers that'll do it.
The Dowager and I passed Edward in the ball. He gave me a look
behind her back, and I gave him one to match it. Just practice,
you know, Tom. A girl can never know when she'll want to be
expert in these things.
She made me lie down on a couch while she turned the lamp low,
and then left me alone in a big palace of a bedroom filled with
things. And I wanted everything I saw. If I could, I'd have
lifted everything in sight.
But every minute brought that doctor nearer. Soon as I could be
really sure she was gone, I got up, and, hurrying to the long
French windows that opened on the great stone piazza, I
unfastened them quietly, and inch by inch I pushed them open.
There within ten feet of me stood Edward. No escape that way. He
saw me, and was tiptoeing heavily toward me, when I heard the
door click behind me, and in walked the Dowager back again.
I flew to her.
"I thought I heard some one out there," I said.
"It frightened me so that I got up to look. Nobody could be out
there, could they?"
She walked to the window and put her head out. Her lips
tightened grimly.
"No, nobody could be out there," she said, breathing hard,
"but you might get nervous just thinking there might be. We'll
go to a room upstairs."
And go we did, in spite of all I could plead about feeling well
enough now to go alone and all the rest of it. How was I to get
out of a second or third-story window?
I began to think about the Correction again as I followed her
upstairs, and after she'd left me I just sat waiting for the
doctor to come and send me there. I didn't much care, till I
remembered the Bishop. I could almost see his face as it would
look when he'd be called to testify against me, and I'd be
standing in that railed-in prisoner's pen, in the middle of the
court-room, where Dan Christensen stood when they tried him.
No, I couldn't bear that; not without a fight, anyway. It was
for the Bishop I'd got into this part of the scrape. I'd get out
of it so's he shouldn't know how bad a thing a girl can be.
While I lay thinking it over, the same maid that had brought me
the tea came in. She was an ugly, thin little thing. If she's a
sample of the maids in that house, the lot of them would take the
kink out of your pretty hair, Thomas J. Dorgan, Esquire, late of
the House of Refuge and soon of Moyamensing. Don't throw things.
People in my set, mine and the Dowager's, don't.
She had been sent to help me undress, she said, and make me
comfortable. The doctor lived just around the corner and would be
in in a minute.
Phew! She wasn't very promising, but she was my only chance.
I took her.
"I really don't need any help, thank you, Nora,'; I said,
chipper as a sparrow, and remembering the name the Dowager had
called her by. "Aunt Henrietta is too fussy, don't you think?
Oh, of course, you won't say a word against her. She told me the
other day that she'd never had a maid so sensible and
quick-witted, too, as her Nora. Do you know, I've a mind to play
a joke on the doctor when he comes. You'll help me, won't you?
Oh, I know you will!" Suddenly I remembered the Bishop's bill.
I took it out of my pocket. Yep, Tom, that's where it went. I had
to choose between giving that skinny maid the biggest tip she
ever got in her life--or Nance Olden to the Correction.
You needn't swear, Tom Dorgan. I fancy if I'd got there, you'd
got worse. No, you bully, you know I wouldn't tell; but the
police sort of know how to pair our kind.
In her cap and apron, I let the doctor in and myself out. And I
don't regret a thing up there in the Square except that lovely
red coat with the high collar and the hat with the fur on it. I'd
give--Tom, get me a coat like that and I'll marry you for life.
No, there's one thing I could do better if it was to be done
over again. I could make that dear little old Bishop wish harder
I'd been his daughter.
What am I mooning about? Oh--nothing. There's the
watch--Edward's watch. Take it.
II.
Yes, empty-handed, Tom Dorgan. And I can't honestly say I didn't
have the chance, but--if my hands are empty my head is full.
Listen.
There's a girl I know with short brown hair, a turned-up nose and
gray eyes, rather far apart. You know her, too? Well, she can't
help that.
But this girl--oh, she makes such a pretty boy! And the ladies at
the hotel over in Brooklyn, they just dote on her when she's not
only a boy but a bell-boy. Her name may be Nancy when she's in
petticoats, but in trousers she's Nathaniel--in short, Nat.
Now, Nat, in blue and buttons, with his nails kept better than
most boys', with his curly hair parted in the middle, and with a
gentle tang to his voice that makes him almost girlish--who would
suspect Nat of having a stolen pass-key in his pocket and a
pretty fair knowledge of the contents of almost every top
bureau-drawer in the hotel?
Not Mrs. Sarah Kingdon, a widow just arrived from Philadelphia,
and desperately gone on young Mr. George Moriway, also fresh from
Philadelphia, and desperately gone on Mrs. Kingdon's money.
The tips that lady gave the bad boy Nat! I knew I couldn't make
you believe it any other way; that's why I passed 'em on to you,
Tommy-boy.
The hotel woman, you know, girls, is a hotel woman because she
isn't fit to be anything else. She's lazy and selfish and little,
and she's shifted all her legitimate cares on to the proprietor's
shoulders. She actually--you can understand and share my
indignation, can't you, Tom, as you've shared other things?--she
even gives over her black tin box full of valuables to the hotel
clerk to put in the safe; the coward! But her vanity--ah, there's
where we get her, such speculators as you and myself. She's got
to outshine the woman who sits at the next table, and so she
borrows her diamonds from the clerk, wears 'em like the peacock
she is, and trembles till they're back in the safe again.
In the meantime she locks them up in the tin box which she puts
in her top bureau-drawer, hides the key, forgets where she hid
it, and--O Tom! after searching for it for hours and making
herself sick with anxiety, she ties up her head in a wet
since we saw him, but he walked straight as the Bishop himself,
and he's a dear little ramrod. "Ah!"--his eyes lit up at sight
of me--"ah, Miss--Miss--of course, I've met the young lady,
Henrietta, but hang me if I haven't forgotten her name."
"Miss--Miss Murieson," lied the old lady, glibly. "A--a
relative."
"Why, mummy!" I said reproachfully.
"There--there. It's only a joke. Isn't it a joke, Edward?" she
demanded, laughing uneasily.
"Joke?" he repeated with a heartybellow of laughter. "Best
kind of a joke, I call it, to find so pretty a girl right in your
own house, eh, Bishop?"
"Why does he call my father `Bishop', mummy?"
I couldn't help it. The fun of hearing the Dowager lie and
knowing the Bishop beside himself with the pain of deception was
too much for me. I could see she didn't dare trust her Edward
with my sad story.
"Ho! ho! The Bishop--that's good. No, my dear Miss Murieson, if
this lady's your mother, why, I must be--at least, I ought to be,
your father. As such, I'm going to have all the privileges of a
parent--bless me, if I'm not."
I don't suppose he'd have done it if he'd been sober, but
there's no telling, when you remember the reputation the Dowager
had given him. But he'd got no further than to put his arm around
me when both the Bishop and the Dowager flew to the rescue. My,
but they were shocked! I couldn't help wondering what they'd have
done if Edward had happened to see the Bishop in the same sort of
tableau earlier in the afternoon.
But I got a lucid interval just then, and distracted their
attention. I stood for a moment, my head bent as though I was
thinking deeply.
"I think I'll go now," I said at length. "I--I don't
understand exactly how I got here," I went on, looking from the
Bishop to the Dowager and back again, "or how I happened to miss
my father. I'm ever--so much obliged to you, and if you will give
me my hat, I'll take the next train back to college."
"You'll do nothing of the sort," said the Dowager, promptly.
"My dear, you're a sweet girl that's been studying too hard. You
must go to my room and rest--"
"And stay for dinner. Don't you care. Sometimes I don't know
how I get here myself." Edward winked jovially.
Well, I did. While the Dowager's back was turned, I gave him the
littlest one, in return for his. It made him drunker than ever.
"I think," said the Bishop, grimly, with a significant glance
at the Dowager, as he turned just then and saw the old cock
ogling me, "the young lady is wiser than we. I'll take her to
the station--"
The station! Ugh! Not Nance Olden, with the red coat still on.
"Impossible, my dear Bishop," interrupted the Dowager. "She
can't be permitted to go back on the train alone."
"Why, Miss--Miss Murieson, I'll see you back all the way to the
college door. Not at all, not at all. Charmed. First, we'll have
dinner--or, first I'll telephone out there and tell 'em you're
with us, so that if there's any rule or anything of that sort--"
The telephone! This wretched Edward with half his wits gave me
more trouble than the Bishop and the Dowager put together. She
jumped at the idea, and left the room, only to come back again to
whisper to me:
"What name, my dear?"
"What name? what name?" I repeated blankly. What name, indeed.
I wonder how "Nance Olden" would have done.
"Don't hurry, dear, don't perplex yourself," she whispered
anxiously, noting my bewilderment. "There's plenty of time, and
it makes no difference--not a particle, really."
I put my hand to my head.
"I can't think--I can't think. There's one girl has nervous
prostration, and her name's got mixed with mine, and I can't--"
"Hush, hush! Never mind. You shall come and lie down in my
room. You'll stay with us to-night, anyway, and we'll have a
doctor in, Bishop."
"That's right," assented the Bishop. "I'll go get him
myself."
"You--you're not going!" I cried in dismay. It was real.
I hated to see him go.
"Nonsense--'phone." It was Edward who went himself to
telephone for the doctor, and I saw my time getting short.
But the Bishop had to go, anyway. He looked out at his horses
shivering in front of the house, and the sight hurried him.
"My child," he said, taking my hand, "just let Mrs. Ramsay
take care of you to-night. Don't bother about anything, but just
rest. I'll see you in the morning," he went on, noticing that I
kind of clung to him. Well, I did. "Can't you remember what I
said to you in the carriage--that I wished you were my daughter.
I wish you were, indeed I do, and that I could take you home with
me and keep you, child."
"Then--to-night--if--when you pray--will you pray for me as if
I was--your own daughter?"
Tom Dorgan, you think no prayers but a priest's are any good,
you bigoted, snickering Catholic! I tell you if some day I cut
loose from you and start in over again, it'll be the Bishop's
prayers that'll do it.
The Dowager and I passed Edward in the ball. He gave me a look
behind her back, and I gave him one to match it. Just practice,
you know, Tom. A girl can never know when she'll want to be
expert in these things.
She made me lie down on a couch while she turned the lamp low,
and then left me alone in a big palace of a bedroom filled with
things. And I wanted everything I saw. If I could, I'd have
lifted everything in sight.
But every minute brought that doctor nearer. Soon as I could be
really sure she was gone, I got up, and, hurrying to the long
French windows that opened on the great stone piazza, I
unfastened them quietly, and inch by inch I pushed them open.
There within ten feet of me stood Edward. No escape that way. He
saw me, and was tiptoeing heavily toward me, when I heard the
door click behind me, and in walked the Dowager back again.
I flew to her.
"I thought I heard some one out there," I said.
"It frightened me so that I got up to look. Nobody could be out
there, could they?"
She walked to the window and put her head out. Her lips
tightened grimly.
"No, nobody could be out there," she said, breathing hard,
"but you might get nervous just thinking there might be. We'll
go to a room upstairs."
And go we did, in spite of all I could plead about feeling well
enough now to go alone and all the rest of it. How was I to get
out of a second or third-story window?
I began to think about the Correction again as I followed her
upstairs, and after she'd left me I just sat waiting for the
doctor to come and send me there. I didn't much care, till I
remembered the Bishop. I could almost see his face as it would
look when he'd be called to testify against me, and I'd be
standing in that railed-in prisoner's pen, in the middle of the
court-room, where Dan Christensen stood when they tried him.
No, I couldn't bear that; not without a fight, anyway. It was
for the Bishop I'd got into this part of the scrape. I'd get out
of it so's he shouldn't know how bad a thing a girl can be.
While I lay thinking it over, the same maid that had brought me
the tea came in. She was an ugly, thin little thing. If she's a
sample of the maids in that house, the lot of them would take the
kink out of your pretty hair, Thomas J. Dorgan, Esquire, late of
the House of Refuge and soon of Moyamensing. Don't throw things.
People in my set, mine and the Dowager's, don't.
She had been sent to help me undress, she said, and make me
comfortable. The doctor lived just around the corner and would be
in in a minute.
Phew! She wasn't very promising, but she was my only chance.
I took her.
"I really don't need any help, thank you, Nora,'; I said,
chipper as a sparrow, and remembering the name the Dowager had
called her by. "Aunt Henrietta is too fussy, don't you think?
Oh, of course, you won't say a word against her. She told me the
other day that she'd never had a maid so sensible and
quick-witted, too, as her Nora. Do you know, I've a mind to play
a joke on the doctor when he comes. You'll help me, won't you?
Oh, I know you will!" Suddenly I remembered the Bishop's bill.
I took it out of my pocket. Yep, Tom, that's where it went. I had
to choose between giving that skinny maid the biggest tip she
ever got in her life--or Nance Olden to the Correction.
You needn't swear, Tom Dorgan. I fancy if I'd got there, you'd
got worse. No, you bully, you know I wouldn't tell; but the
police sort of know how to pair our kind.
In her cap and apron, I let the doctor in and myself out. And I
don't regret a thing up there in the Square except that lovely
red coat with the high collar and the hat with the fur on it. I'd
give--Tom, get me a coat like that and I'll marry you for life.
No, there's one thing I could do better if it was to be done
over again. I could make that dear little old Bishop wish harder
I'd been his daughter.
What am I mooning about? Oh--nothing. There's the
watch--Edward's watch. Take it.
II.
Yes, empty-handed, Tom Dorgan. And I can't honestly say I didn't
have the chance, but--if my hands are empty my head is full.
Listen.
There's a girl I know with short brown hair, a turned-up nose and
gray eyes, rather far apart. You know her, too? Well, she can't
help that.
But this girl--oh, she makes such a pretty boy! And the ladies at
the hotel over in Brooklyn, they just dote on her when she's not
only a boy but a bell-boy. Her name may be Nancy when she's in
petticoats, but in trousers she's Nathaniel--in short, Nat.
Now, Nat, in blue and buttons, with his nails kept better than
most boys', with his curly hair parted in the middle, and with a
gentle tang to his voice that makes him almost girlish--who would
suspect Nat of having a stolen pass-key in his pocket and a
pretty fair knowledge of the contents of almost every top
bureau-drawer in the hotel?
Not Mrs. Sarah Kingdon, a widow just arrived from Philadelphia,
and desperately gone on young Mr. George Moriway, also fresh from
Philadelphia, and desperately gone on Mrs. Kingdon's money.
The tips that lady gave the bad boy Nat! I knew I couldn't make
you believe it any other way; that's why I passed 'em on to you,
Tommy-boy.
The hotel woman, you know, girls, is a hotel woman because she
isn't fit to be anything else. She's lazy and selfish and little,
and she's shifted all her legitimate cares on to the proprietor's
shoulders. She actually--you can understand and share my
indignation, can't you, Tom, as you've shared other things?--she
even gives over her black tin box full of valuables to the hotel
clerk to put in the safe; the coward! But her vanity--ah, there's
where we get her, such speculators as you and myself. She's got
to outshine the woman who sits at the next table, and so she
borrows her diamonds from the clerk, wears 'em like the peacock
she is, and trembles till they're back in the safe again.
In the meantime she locks them up in the tin box which she puts
in her top bureau-drawer, hides the key, forgets where she hid
it, and--O Tom! after searching for it for hours and making
herself sick with anxiety, she ties up her head in a wet
- bishop [´biʃəp]
n.主教 (初中英语单词) - laughter [´lɑ:ftə] n.笑，笑声 (初中英语单词)
- rescue [´reskju:] vt.&n.救援；挽救 (初中英语单词)
- interval [´intəvəl] n.间隙；(工间)休息 (初中英语单词)
- wretched [´retʃid] a.可怜的；倒霉的 (初中英语单词)
- dismay [dis´mei] n.惊慌 vt.使惊慌 (初中英语单词)
- bother [´bɔðə] v.打扰 n.麻烦(事) (初中英语单词)
- nervous [´nə:vəs] a.神经的；神经过敏的 (初中英语单词)
- waiting [´weitiŋ] n.等候；伺候 (初中英语单词)
- refuge [´refju:dʒ] v.&n.避难(所)；庇护 (初中英语单词)
- promising [´prɔmisiŋ] a.有希望的；有为的 (初中英语单词)
- sparrow [´spærəu] n.麻雀 (初中英语单词)
- sensible [´sensəbəl] a.感觉得到的 (初中英语单词)
- collar [´kɔlə] n.衣领；(狗等的)项圈 (初中英语单词)
- honestly [´ɔnistli] ad.诚实地，老实地 (初中英语单词)
- trousers [´trauzəz] n.裤子，长裤 (初中英语单词)
- stolen [´stəulən] steal 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- contents [´kɔ:ntents] n.容纳物；要旨 (初中英语单词)
- selfish [´selfiʃ] a.自私的，利己的 (初中英语单词)
- meantime [´mi:ntaim] n.&ad.其间；同时 (初中英语单词)
- anxiety [æŋ´zaiəti] n.挂念；渴望；焦虑的事 (初中英语单词)
- repeated [ri´pi:tid] a.反复的；重复的 (高中英语单词)
- hearty [´hɑ:ti] a.热忱的；强健的 (高中英语单词)
- bellow [´beləu] v.吼叫；轰鸣 (高中英语单词)
- hearing [´hiəriŋ] n.听力；听证会；审讯 (高中英语单词)
- grimly [´grimli] ad.严厉地；坚强地 (高中英语单词)
- significant [sig´nifikənt] a.重要的；意义重大的 (高中英语单词)
- perplex [pə´pleks] vt.困惑；使为难 (高中英语单词)
- particle [´pɑ:tikl] n.微粒；极小量 (高中英语单词)
- hurried [´hʌrid] a.仓促的，慌忙的 (高中英语单词)
- testify [´testifai] v.证明；证实；表明 (高中英语单词)
- esquire [i´skwaiə] n.先生 (高中英语单词)
- desperately [´despəritli] ad.绝望地；拼命地 (高中英语单词)
- legitimate [li´dʒitimit] a.合法的 vt.使合法 (高中英语单词)
- reputation [repju´teiʃən] n.名誉；名声；信誉 (英语四级单词)
- correction [kə´rekʃən] n.改正，纠正，修改 (英语四级单词)
- scrape [skreip] v.&n.刮，削，擦；搔 (英语四级单词)
- undress [ʌn´dres] v.(给)脱衣 (英语四级单词)
- deception [di´sepʃən] n.欺骗，诈骗；骗术 (英语六级单词)
- bewilderment [bi´wildəmənt] n.为难；狼狈；迷惑 (英语六级单词)
- taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
- piazza [pi´ætsə] n.广场；市场 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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