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1、【儿童英文读物】Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel BrothersCHAPTER I. Thornycroft House Thornycroft Farm, near Barbury Green, July 1, 190-. Picture of woman and goose In alluding to myself as a Goose Girl, I am using only the most modest of my titles; for I am also a poultry-maid, a tender of Belgian hares
2、 and rabbits, and a shepherdess; but I particularly fancy the rôle of Goose Girl, because it recalls the German fairy tales of my early youth, when I always yearned, but never hoped, to be precisely what I now am. As I was jolting along these charming Sussex roads the other day, a fat buff pon
3、y and a tippy cart being my manner of progression, I chanced upon the village of Barbury Green. One glance was enough for any woman, who, having eyes to see, could see with them; but I made assurance doubly sure by driving about a little, struggling to conceal my new-born passion from the stable-boy
4、 who was my escort. Then, it being high noon of a cloudless day, I descended from the trap and said to the astonished yokel: “You may go back to the Hydropathic; I am spending a month or two here. Wait a momentIll send a message, please!” I then scribbled a word or two to those having me in custody.
5、 “I am very tired of people,” the note ran, “and want to rest myself by living a while with things. Address me (if you must) at Barbury Green post-office, or at all events send me a box of simple clothing therenothing but shirts and skirts, please. I cannot forget that I am only twenty miles from Ox
6、enbridge (though it might be one hundred and twenty, which is the reason I adore it), but I rely upon you to keep an honourable distance yourselves, and not to divulge my place of retreat to others, especially toyou know whom! Do not pursue me. I will never be taken alive!” Having cut, thus, the cab
7、le that bound me to civilisation, and having seen the buff pony and the dazed yokel disappear in a cloud of dust, I looked about me with what Stevenson calls a “fine, dizzy, muddle-headed joy,” the joy of a successful rebel or a liberated serf. Plenty of money in my pursethat was unromantic, of cour
8、se, but it simplified mattersand nine hours of daylight remaining in which to find a lodging. Life converges there, just at the public duck-pond The village is one of the oldest, and I am sure it must be one of the quaintest, in England. It is too small to be printed on the map (an honour that has s
9、poiled more than one Arcadia), so pray do not look there, but just believe in it, and some day you may be rewarded by driving into it by chance, as I did, and feel the same Columbus thrill running, like an electric current, through your veins. I withhold specific geographical information in order th
10、at you may not miss that Columbus thrill, which comes too seldom in a world of railroads. The Green is in the very centre of Barbury village, and all civic, political, family, and social life converges there, just at the public duck-ponda wee, sleepy lake with a slope of grass-covered stones by whic
11、h the ducks descend for their swim. The houses are set about the Green like those in a toy village. They are of old brick, with crumpled, up-and-down roofs of deep-toned red, and tufts of stonecrop growing from the eaves. Diamond-paned windows, half open, admit the sweet summer air; and as for the g
12、ardens in front, it would seem as if the inhabitants had nothing to do but work in them, there is such a riotous profusion of colour and bloom. To add to the effect, there are always pots of flowers hanging from the trees, blue flax and yellow myrtle; and cages of Java sparrows and canaries singing
13、joyously, as well they may in such a paradise. The houses are set about the Green The shops are idyllic, too, as if Nature had seized even the man of trade and made him subservient to her designs. The general drapers, where I fitted myself out for a day or two quite easily, is set back in a tangle o
14、f poppies and sweet peas, Madonna lilies and Canterbury bells. The shop itself has a gay awning, and what do you think the draper has suspended from it, just as a picturesque suggestion to the passer-by? Suggestion I call it, because I should blush to use the word advertisement in describing anythin
15、g so dainty and decorative. Well, then, garlands of shoes, if you please! Baby bootlets of bronze; tiny ankle-ties in yellow, blue, and scarlet kid; glossy patent-leather pumps shining in the sun, with festoons of slippers at the corners, flowery slippers in imitation Berlin wool-work. If you make t
16、his picture in your minds-eye, just add a window above the awning, and over the fringe of marigolds in the window-box put the drapers wife dancing a rosy-cheeked baby. Alas! my words are only black and white, I fear, and this picture needs a palette drenched in primary colours. Along the street, a s
17、hort distance, is the old watchmakers. Set in the hedge at the gate is a glass case with Multum in Parvo painted on the woodwork. Within, a little stand of trinkets revolves slowly; as slowly, I imagine, as the current of business in that quiet street. The house stands a trifle back and is covered t
18、hickly with ivy, while over the entrance-door of the shop is a great round clock set in a green frame of clustering vine. The hands pointed to one when I passed the watchmakers garden with its thicket of fragrant lavender and its murmuring bees; so I went in to the sign of the “Strong i the Arm” for
19、 some cold luncheon, determining to patronise “The Running Footman” at the very next opportunity. Neither of these inns is starred by Baedeker, and this fact adds the last touch of enchantment to the picture. The landlady at the “Strong i the Arm” stabbed me in the heart by telling me that there wer
20、e no apartments to let in the village, and that she had no private sitting-room in the inn; but she speedily healed the wound by saying that I might be accommodated at one of the farm-houses in the vicinity. Did I object to a farm-ouse? Then she could cheerfully recommend the Evans farm, only alf a
21、mile away. She ad understood from Miss Phœbe Evan, who sold her poultry, that they would take one lady lodger if she didnt wish much waiting upon. In my present mood I was in search of the strenuous life, and eager to wait, rather than to be waited upon; so I walked along the edge of the Green
22、, wishing that some mentally unbalanced householder would take a sudden fancy to me and ask me to come in and lodge awhile. I suppose these families live under their roofs of peach-blow tiles, in the midst of their blooming gardens, for a guinea a week or thereabouts; yet if they “undertook” me (to
23、use their own phrase), the bill for my humble meals and bed would be at least double that. I dont know that I blame them; one should have proper compensation for admitting a world-stained lodger into such an Eden. When I was searching for rooms a week ago, I chanced upon a pretty cottage where the w
24、oman had sometimes let apartments. She showed me the premises and asked me if I would mind taking my meals in her own dining-room, where I could be served privately at certain hours: and, since she had but the one sitting-room, would I allow her to go on using it occasionally? also, if I had no spec
25、ial preference, would I take the second-sized bedroom and leave her in possession of the largest one, which permitted her to have the babys crib by her bedside? She thought I should be quite as comfortable, and it was her opinion that in making arrangements with lodgers, it was a good plan not to “b
26、ryke up the ome any more than was necessary.” “Bryke up the ome!” That is seemingly the malignant purpose with which I entered Barbury Green.CHAPTER II July 4th. Enter the family of Thornycroft Farm, of which I am already a member in good and regular standing. I introduce Mrs. Heaven first, for she
27、is a self-saturated person who would never forgive the insult should she receive any lower place. She welcomed me with the statement: “We do not take lodgers here, nor boarders; no lodgers, nor boarders, but we do occasionally admit paying guests, those who look as if they would appreciate the quiet
28、ude of the plyce and be willing as you might say to remunerate according.” Mrs. Heaven I did not mind at this particular juncture what I was called, so long as the epithet was comparatively unobjectionable, so I am a paying guest, therefore, and I expect to pay handsomely for the handsome appellatio
29、n. Mrs. Heaven is short and fat; she fills her dress as a pin-cushion fills its cover; she wears a cap and apron, and she is so full of platitudes that she would have burst had I not appeared as a providential outlet for them. Her accent is not of the farm, but of the town, and smacks wholly of the
30、marts of trade. She is repetitious, too, as well as platitudinous. “I ope if theres anythink you require you will let us know, let us know,” she says several times each day; and whenever she enters my sitting-room she prefaces her conversation with the remark: “I trust you are finding it quiet here,
31、 miss? Its the quietude of the plyce that is its charm, yes, the quietude. And yet” (she dribbles on) “it wears on a body after a while, miss. I often go into Woodmucket to visit one of my sons just for the noise, simply for the noise, miss, for nothink else in the world but the noise. Theres nothin
32、k like noise for soothing nerves that is worn threadbare with the quietude, miss, or at least thats my experience; and yet to a strynger the quietude of the plyce is its charm, undoubtedly its chief charm; and that is what our paying guests always say, although our charges are somewhat higher than o
33、ther plyces. If theres anythink you require, miss, I ope youll mention it. There is not a commodious assortment in Barbury Green, but we can always send the pony to Woodmucket in case of urgency. Our paying guest last summer was a Mrs. Pollock, and she was by way of having sudden fancies. Young and
34、unmarried though you are, miss, I think you will tyke my meaning without my speaking plyner? Well, at six oclock of a rainy afternoon, she was seized with an unaccountable desire for vegetable marrows, and Mr. Eaven put the pony in the cart and went to Woodmucket for them, which is a great advantage
35、 to be so near a town and yet ave the quietude.” Mr. Heaven Mr. Heaven is merged, like Mr. Jellyby, in the more shining qualities of his wife. A line of description is too long for him. Indeed, I can think of no single word brief enough, at least in English. The Latin “nil” will do, since no languag
36、e is rich in words of less than three letters. He is nice, kind, bald, timid, thin, and so colourless that he can scarcely be discerned save in a strong light. When Mrs. Heaven goes out into the orchard in search of him, I can hardly help calling from my window, “Bear a trifle to the right, Mrs. Hea
37、vennow to the leftjust in front of you nowif you put out your hands you will touch him.” Phœbe, aged seventeen, is the daughter of the house. She is virtuous, industrious, conscientious, and singularly destitute of physical charm. She is more than plain; she looks as if she had been planned wi
38、thout any definite purpose in view, made of the wrong materials, been badly put together, and never properly finished off; but “plain” after all is a relative word. Many a plain girl has been married for her beauty; and now and then a beauty, falling under a cold eye, has been thought plain. Ph&oeli
39、g;be has her compensations, for she is beloved by, and reciprocates the passion of, the Woodmancote carrier, Woodmucket being the English manner of pronouncing the place of his abode. If he “carries” as energetically for the great public as he fetches for Phœbe, then he must be a rising and a
40、prosperous man. He brings her daily, wild strawberries, cherries, birds nests, peacock feathers, sea-shells, green hazel-nuts, samples of hens food, or bouquets of wilted field flowers tied together tightly and held with a large, moist, loving hand. He has fine curly hair of sandy hue, which forms a
41、n aureole on his brow, and a reddish beard, which makes another inverted aureole to match, round his chin. One cannot look at him, especially when the sun shines through him, without thinking how lovely he would be if stuffed and set on wheels, with a little string to drag him about. The Woodmancote
42、 carrier Phœbe confided to me that she was on the eve of loving the postman when the carrier came across her horizon. “It doesnt do to be too hysty, does it, miss?” she asked me as we were weeding the onion bed. “I was to give the postman his answer on the Monday night, and it was on the Monda
43、y morning that Mr. Gladwish made his first trip here as carrier. I may say I never wyvered from that moment, and no more did he. When I think how near I came to promising the postman it gives me a turn.” (I can understand that, for I once met the man I nearly promised years before to marry, and we b
44、oth experienced such a sense of relief at being free instead of bound that we came near falling in love for sheer joy.) Picture of toy on wheels The last and most important member of the household is the Square Baby. His name is Albert Edward, and he is really five years old and no baby at all; but
45、his appearance on this planet was in the nature of a complete surprise to all parties concerned, and he is spoiled accordingly. He has a square head and jaw, square shoulders, square hands and feet. He is red and white and solid and stolid and slow-witted, as the young of his class commonly are, and
46、 will make a bulwark of the nation in course of time, I should think; for England has to produce a few thousand such square babies every year for use in the colonies and in the standing army. Albert Edward has already a military gait, and when he has acquired a habit of obedience at all comparable w
47、ith his power of command, he will be able to take up the white mans burden with distinguished success. Meantime I can never look at him without marvelling how the English climate can transmute bacon and eggs, tea and the solid household loaf into such radiant roses and lilies as bloom upon his cheek
48、s and lips.CHAPTER III July 8th. Thornycroft is by way of being a small poultry farm. In reaching it from Barbury Green, you take the first left-hand road, go till you drop, and there you are. It reminds me of my “grandmothers farm at Older.” Did you know the song when you were a child? My grandmother had a very fine farm Way down in the fields of Older. With a cluck-cluck here, And a cluck-cluck there, Here and there a cluck-cluck, Cluck-cluck here and there, Down in the fields at Older. It goes on for ever by the simple subterfuge of changing a