Don't you love a love-story; starting right before your eyes as casual as if it was preserves getting cooked or parsley coming up? It doesn't often happen to me to see one start, but once it did. It didn't start like anything at all that was going to be anything, but just still and quiet, same as the stars come out. I guess that's the way most great things move, isn't it? Still and quiet, like stars coming out. Or similar to stars.
It was the time of the Proudfits' big [Pg 233]what-they-called week-end parties, and it was the Saturday of the biggest of them, when a dozen city people came down to Friendship Village for the lark6. And with them was to come a Piano Lady and a Violin Man—and a man I'd known about in the magazines, a Novel-and-Poem Man that writes the kind of things that gets through all the walls between you and the world, so's you can talk to everything there is. I was crazy to see the Novel-and-Poem Man—from behind somewheres, though, so's he wouldn't see me and look down on me. And when Miss Clementina Proudfit asked me to bring her out some things from the city Saturday night, chocolate peppermints7 and red candles and like that, and said she'd send the automobile8 to the train for me to fetch up the things and see the decorations, I was real pleased. But I was the most excited about maybe seeing the Poem-and-Novel Man.
"What's he like, Miss Clementina?" I ask' her. "When I hear his name I feel like when I hear the President's. Or even more that way."
"I've never met him," she says. "Mother knows him—he's her lion, not mine."
"He writes lovely things," I says, "things that makes you feel like everybody's way of doing is only lukewarm, and like you could just bring yourself to a boil to do good and straighten things out in the world, no matter what the lukewarm-way folks thought."
[Pg 234]
Miss Clementina looked over to me with a wonderful way she had—beautiful face and beautiful eyes softening10 to Summer.
"I know—know," she says; "I dread11 meeting him, for fear he doesn't mean it."
I knew what she meant. You can mean a thing you write in a book, or that you say in talk, or for other folks to do. But meaning it for living it—that's different.
I came out from the city that night on the accommodation, tired to death and loaded down with bundles for everybody in Friendship Village. Folks used to send into town by me for everything but stoves and wagons12, though I wouldn't buy anything there except what you can't buy in the village: lamb's-wool for comforters, and cut-glass and baby-pushers, and shrimps—that Silas won't keep in the post-office store, because they don't agree with his stomach. Well, I was all packages that night, and it was through dropping one in the seat in front of me that I first saw the little boy.
He was laying down, getting to sleep if he could and pulling his eyes open occasional to see what was going on around him. His mother had had the seat turned, and she sat there beyond him, facing me, and I noticed her—flat red cheeks, an ostrich13 feather broke in the middle, blue and red stone rings on three fingers, and giving a good deal of attention to studying the folks around her. She was the[Pg 235] kind of woman you see and don't look back to, 'count of other things interesting you more.
But the little boy, he was different. He wasn't more than a year old, and he didn't look that—and his cheeks were flushed and his eyelashes and mouth made you think "My!" I remember feeling I didn't see how the woman could keep from waking him up, just to prove he was hers and she could if she wanted to.
Instead of that, all she did was continually to get up and go out of the car. Every station we stopped at—and the accommodation acts like it was made for the stations and not the stations for it—she was up and out, as if the town was something swimming up to the car-door to speak to her. She'd leave the baby asleep in the seat, and I wondered what would happen if he woke up while she was gone, and started to roll. She stayed every time up till after the train started—I didn't wonder it made her cold, and that after a bit she put on her coat before she went. And once or twice she carried out her valise with her, as if she might have expected somebody to be there to get it. "Mebbe she's got somebody's laundry," thinks I, "and mebbe a stranger has asked her to bring it out on the train and she can't remember what station it's to be put off at." They send things to stations along the way a lot on the accommodation—everybody being neighbors, so.
[Pg 236]
Well, when we got to the Junction14, out she went again, cloak and valise and all. But I didn't think much about her then, because at the Junction it's always all excitement, being that's where they switch the parlor15 car off the train, and whoever is in it for Friendship Village has to come back in the day coach for the rest of the way, and be just folks. And among those that came back that night was the Brother-man.
I dunno if you'll know what I mean by that name for him. Some men are just men, like they thought God made them just for the pleasure of making them. And some men are flying around like they wanted to prove that the Almighty16 didn't make a mistake when He created them. But there are some men that just live like God hadn't made them so much as that they're a piece of Him, and they haven't forgotten it and they feel kindly17 toward all the other pieces. Well, this man was one of the Brother-men. I knew it the minute I saw him.
By the time he came in the car, moving leisurely18 and like getting a seat wasn't so interesting as most other things, there wasn't a seat left, excepting only the turned one in front of the little chap asleep. The man looked around idle for a minute and see that they wasn't cloak or valise keeping that seat, and he sat down and opened the book he'd had his finger in the place all the time, and allowed to read.
There's consid'rable switching to do at the [Pg 237]Junction, time we get started; and the jolts19 and bounces did just exactly what I thought they would do—woke the little chap up. From before the train started he begun stirring and whimpering—that way a baby does when it wants nothing in the world but a hand to be laid on it. Isn't it as if its mother's hand was a kind of healing that big folks forget about needing? By the time the train was out on the road in earnest, the little chap, he was in earnest, too. And he just what-you-might-say yelled. But no mother came. They wasn't a mother's hand with big red and blue rings on three fingers to lay on the little boy's back. And there wasn't a mother of him anywhere's in sight.
In a minute or two the Brother-man looked up. He hadn't seemed to see the baby before or to sense that he was a baby. And he looked at him crying and he laid his book down and he looked all around him, perplexish, and then he looked over to me that was looking at him perplexish, too. And being he was a man and I wasn't, I got right up and went round there and picked the little chap up in my arms and sat down with him.
"His ma went out of the car somewheres," I explained it.
He had lifted his hat and jumped up, polite as if he was the one I'd picked up. And he stood looking down at me.
"I wonder if I couldn't fetch her," he says[Pg 238]—and his voice was one of the voices that most says an idea all alone. I mean you'd most have known what he meant if he'd just spoke20 along without using any words—oh, well, I dunno if that sounds like anything, but I guess you know the kind I mean. The Novel-and-Poem Man's stories are the same kind, being they say so much that never does get set up in type.
The baby didn't stop crying at all—seems as though your hands don't have the right healing unless—unless—well, it didn't stop nor even halt. And so I says, hesitating, I says: "You wouldn't know her," I says. "I been watching her. I could find her better—if so be you wouldn't mind taking the baby."
The Brother-man put out his arms. I remember I looked up in his face then, and he was smiling—and his smile talked the same as his voice. And his face was all full of what he meant. He had one of those Summer faces like Miss Clementina's—just a general liking21 of the minute and a special liking for all the world. And what he said made me think of Summer, too:
"Mind?" says he. "Why it's like putting your cap over a butterfly."
He took the little fellow in his arms, and it was then that I first sensed how beautiful the Brother-man was—strong and fine and quiet, like he done whatever he done, and said whatever he said, [Pg 239]all over him, soul and all, and didn't just speak with his muscles, same as some. And the baby, he was beautiful, too, big and fine and healthy and a boy, only not still a minute nor didn't know what quiet meant. But he stopped crying the instant the man took him, and they both looked at each other like—oh, like they were more alike than the years between them wanted to let them think. Isn't it pitiful and isn't it wonderful—when two folks meet? Big or little, nice or horrid22, pleasant or cross, famous or ragged23 or talking or scairt—it don't make any differ'nce. They're just brother-pieces, broke off the same way. That was how the Brother-man looked down at the little chap, and I dunno but that was how the little chap looked up at him. Because the little thing threw out his arms toward him, and we both see the letter under his blanket pinned to his chest.
All of a sudden, I understood what had happened—almost without the use of my brain, as you do sometimes.
"Sit down a minute," I said to the Brother-man. "I guess mebbe this letter tells where she is."
And so it did. It was written in pencil, spelled irregular and addressed uphill, and the direction told the story even before the letter did. "To Anybody," the direction was. And the inside of the letter said:
"Take care of my Baby. I ain't fit and never was and now don't think to be anywheres long. Don't look for me.[Pg 240] The baby would be best off with anybody but me, and don't think to be anywheres long and so would be orphant quite soon sure. He ain't no name so best not put mine except.
Mother.
P. S. If he puts out his hand he means you should kiss his hand then he won't cry. Don't forget, then he won't cry.
P. S. When he can't get to sleep he can get to sleep if you rub the back of his neck."
I remember how the Brother-man looked at me when we'd got it spelled out.
"Oh," he said—and then he said a name that sounded like somebody calling to its Father from inside the dark.
I hate to think of what I said. I said it kind of mechanical and wooden, the way we get to be from shifting the burdens off our own backs where they belong, onto somebody else's back—and doing it second-nature, and as if we were constructed slanting24 so that burdens could slip off. What I said was:
"I suppose we'd better tell the conductor."
"Tell the conductor!" said he, wondering. "What on earth for?"
"I dunno," says I, some taken back. I suppose I'd had some far notion of telling him because he wore a uniform.
"What do we want to tell him for?" this Brother-man repeated. "We know."
Oh, but that's come back to me, time and time[Pg 241] again, when I've thought I needed help in taking care of somebody, or settling something, or doing the best way for folks. "What do we want to tell the conductor or anybody else for? We know." And ten to one we are the one who can do the thing ourselves.
"But what are we going to do?" I said. I think that his eyes were the kind of eyes that just make you say "What are we going to do?" and not "What are you going to do?" or "What are they going to do?"—same as most folks start to say, same as I had started.
For the first time the Brother-man looked helpless—but he spoke real firm.
"Keep him," he says, simple.
"Keep him!" I said over—since I had lived quite a while in a world where those words are not common.
He looked down thoughtful at the little chap who was lying there, contented25, going here and there with his fists, and looking up at the lights as if he was reflecting over the matter some himself.
"The conductor," said the Brother-man, "would telegraph, and most likely find the mother. If he was efficient enough, he might even get her arrested. And what earthly good would that do to the child? Our concern is with this little old man here, with his life hanging on his shoulders waiting to be lived. Isn't it?" he asked, simple. And in a minute, he[Pg 242] added: "I always hoped that this would never happen to me—because when it does happen, there's only one thing to do: Keep them." And he added in another minute: "I don't know—I ought to look at it that I've been saved the trouble of going out and finding a way to help—" only you understand, his words came all glossy26 and real different from mine.
I tell you, anybody like that makes all the soul in you get up and recognize itself as being you; and your body and what it wants and what it is afraid of is no more able to run you then than a pinch of dirt would be, sprinkled on your wings. Before I knew it, my body was keeping quiet, like a child that's been brought up well. And my soul was saying whatever it pleased.
"I'm a woman," I said, "and alone in the world. I'm the one to take him."
"I'm alone in the world too," he said, "and I'm a man. So I'm just as able to care for him as you are. I'll keep him."
Then he looked down the car, kind of startled, and began smiling, slow and nice.
"On my word," he said, "I'd forgotten that besides being a man I'm about to be a guest. And this little old chap wasn't included in the invitation."
I looked out the window to see where we were getting, and there we were drawing over the Flats outside Friendship Village, and the brakeman came[Pg 243] to the door and shouted the name. When I hear the name that way, and when I see the Fair ground and the Catholic church steeple and the canal bridge and the old fort and the gas house, it's always as sweet as something new, and as something old, and it's something sweeter than either. It makes me feel happy and good and like two folks instead of one.
"Look here," I said, brisk, "this is where I get off. This is home. And I'm going to take this baby with me. You go on to your visiting place—so be you'll help me off," I says, "with my baby and my bundles that's for half of Friendship Village."
"Friendship Village!" he said over, as if he hadn't heard the man call. "Is this Friendship Village? Why, then this," he said, "is where I'm going too. This is where the Proudfits live, isn't it?" he said—and he said some more, meditative27, about towns acting28 so important over having one name and not another, when nobody can remember either name. But I hardly heard him. He was going to the Proudfits'. And without knowing how I knew it, I knew all over me, all of a sudden, who he was: That he was the Novel-and-Poem man himself.
"You can't be him!" I said aloud. I don't know what I was looking for—a man with wings or what. But it wasn't for somebody like this—all simple and still and every day—like stars coming[Pg 244] out. "You can't be him," says I, mentioning his name. "He was to get here this afternoon on the Through."
"That alone would prove I'm I," he said, merry. "I always miss the Throughs."
Think of that.... There I'd been riding all that way beside him, talking to him as familiar as if he had been just folks.
It seems a dream when I think of it now. The Proudfits' automobile was there for him too—because he had telegraphed that he would take the next train—as well as for me and the chocolate peppermints and the red candles. And so, before I could think about me being me sure enough, there I was in the Proudfits' car, glassed in and lit up, and a stranger-baby in my arms; and beside me the Novel-and-Poem man that was the Brother-man too,—the man that had made me talk through walls with everything there is. Oh, and how I wanted to tell him! And when I tried to tell him what he had meant to me, how do you guess it came out of my brain?
"I've read your book," says I, like a goose.
But he seemed real sort of pleased. "I've been honored," he said, gentle.
I looked up at him; and I knew how he knew already that I didn't know all the hard parts in the book, and all the big words, and some of the little nice things he had tried to work out to suit him.[Pg 245] And it seemed as if any praise of mine would only make him hurt with not being appreciated. Still, I wanted my best to say something out of the gratitude29 in me.
"It—helped," I said; and couldn't say more to save me.
But he turned and looked down at me almost as he had looked at the little chap.
"That is the only compliment I ever try to get," he said to me, as grave as grave.
And at that I saw plain what it was that had made him seem so much like a friend, and what had made me think to call him the Brother-man. Why, he was folks, like me. He wasn't only somebody big and distinguished30 and name-in-the-paper. He was like those that you meet all the time, going round the streets, talking to you casual, coming out of their houses quiet as stars coming out. He was folks and a brother to folks; and he knew it, and he seemed to want to keep letting folks know that he knew it. He wasn't the kind that goes around thinking "Me, me, me," nor even "You and me." It was "You and me and all of us" with the Brother-man.
"Isn't it strange," he says once, while we rode along, "that what all these streets and lights and houses are for, and what the whole world is for is helped along by taking just one little chap and bringing him up—bringing him up?" And he looked down at the baby, that was drowsing off in my arms,[Pg 246] as if little chaps in general were to him windows into somewhere else.
The Proudfit house was lamps from top to bottom, but I could see from the glass vestibule that the big rooms were all empty, and I thought mebbe they hadn't had dinner yet, being they have it all unholy hours when most folks's is digested and ready to let them sleep. But when we stepped in the hall I heard a little tip-tap of strings31 from up above, and it was from the music-room that opens off the first stair-landing, and dinner was over and they were all up there; and the Piano Lady and the Violin Man were gettin' ready to play. Madame Proudfit had heard the car, and came down the stairs, saying a little pleased word when she saw the Brother-man. She looked lovely in black lace, and jewels I didn't know the name of, and she was gracious and glad and made him one of the welcomes that stay alive afterwards and are almost people to you to think about. The Brother-man kissed her hand, and he says to her, some rueful and some wanting to laugh:
"I'm most awfully32 sorry about the train, Madame Proudfit. But—I've brought two of us to make up for being so late. Will—will that not do?" he says.
Madame Proudfit looked over at me with a smile that was like people too—only her smile was like[Pg 247] nice company and his was like dear friends; and then she saw the baby.
"Calliope!" she said, "what on earth have you been doing now?"
"She hasn't done it. I did it," says the Brother-man. "Look at him! You rub the back of his neck when he won't sleep."
Madame Proudfit looked from him to me.
"How utterly33, extravagantly34 like both of you!" Madame Proudfit said. "Come in the library and tell me about it."
We went in the big, brown library, where nothing looked as if it would understand about this, except, mebbe, some of the books—and not all of them—and the fire, that was living on the hearth35, understanding all about everything. I sat by the fire and pulled back the little chap's blanket and undid37 his coat and took his bonnet38 off; his hair was all mussed up at the back and the cheek he'd slept on was warm-red. Madame Proudfit and the Brother-man stood on the hearth-rug, looking down. Only she was looking from one star to another, and the Brother-man and I, we were on the same star, looking round.
We told her what had happened, some of his telling and some of mine. It came over me, while we were doing it, that what had sounded so sensible and sure in the train and in the automobile and in our two hearts sounded different here in the [Pg 248]Proudfits' big, brown library, with Madame Proudfit in black lace and jewels I didn't know the name of, listening. But then I looked up in the Brother-man's face and I got right back, like he was a kind of perpetual telegraph, the feeling of its being sensible and the only sensible thing to do. Sensible in the sense of your soul being sensible, and not just your being sensible like your neighbors.
"But, my dear, dear children," Madame Proudfit says, and stopped. "My dear children," she says on, "what, exactly, are you going to do with him?"
"Keep him!" says the Brother-man prompt, and beamed on her as if he had said the one possible answer.
"But—keep him!" says Madame Proudfit. "How 'keep him'? Be practical. What are you going to do?"
It makes you feel real helpless when folks in black lace tell you to be practical, as if that came before everything else—especially when their "practical" and your "practical" might as well be in two different languages. And yet Madame Proudfit is kind and good too, and she understands that you've got to help or you might as well not be alive; and she gives and gives and gives. But this—well, she saw the need and all that, but her way that night would have been to give money and send the little chap away. You know how some are. They can [Pg 249]understand everything good and kind—up to a certain point. And that point is, keep him. They can't seem to get past that.
"Keep him!" she says. "Make your bachelor apartment into a nursery? Or you, Calliope, leave him to mind the house while you are canvassing39? Be practical. What, exactly, are you going to do?"
Then the Brother-man frowned a little—I hadn't known he could, but I was glad he knew how.
"Really," he said, "I haven't decided40 yet on the cut of his knickerbockers, or on what college he shall attend, or whether he shall spend his vacations at home or abroad. The details will get themselves done. I only know I mean to keep him."
She shook her head as if she was talking to a foreign language; then we heard somebody coming—a little rustle41 and swish and afterwards a voice. These three things by themselves would have made somebody more attractive than some women know how to be. I'll never forget how she seemed when she came to the door—Miss Clementina, waiting to speak with her mother and not knowing anybody else was with her.
Honest, I couldn't tell what her dress was—and me a woman that has turned her hand to dressmaking. It was all thin, like light, and it had all little ways of hanging that made you know you never could make one like it, so's you might as well enjoy[Pg 250] yourself looking and not fuss with trying to remember how it was put together. But her dress wasn't so much like light as her face. Miss Clementina's face—oh, it was like the face of a beautiful woman that somebody tells you about, and that you never do get to see, and if you did, like enough she might not be so beautiful after all—but you always think of her as being the way you mean when you say "beautiful." Miss Clementina looked like that. And when I saw her that night I could hardly wait to have her face and eyes soften9 all to Summer, that wonderful way she had.
"Oh, Miss Clementina," I says, "I've got a baby. At least, he's only half mine. I mean—"
Then, while she was coming toward us along the lamp-light, as if it was made to bring her, the little chap began waking up. He stirred, and budded up his lips, and said little baby-things in his throat, and begun to cry, soft and lonesome, as if he didn't understand. Oh, isn't it true? A baby's waking-up minute, when it cries a little and don't know where it is, ain't that like us, sometimes crying out sort of blind to be took care of? And when the little thing opened his eyes, first thing he saw was Miss Clementina, standing36 beside him. And what did that little chap do instead of stopping crying but just hold out one hand toward her, and kind of bend across, same as if he meant something.
With that the Brother-man, that Madame [Pg 251]Proudfit hadn't had a chance yet to present to Miss Clementina, he says to her all excited:
"He wants you to kiss his hand! Kiss his hand and he'll stop crying!"
Miss Clementina looked up at him like a little question, then she stooped and kissed the baby's hand, and we three watched him perfectly42 breathless to see what he would do. And he done exactly what that up-hill note had said he would—he stopped crying, and he done more than it said he would—he smiled sweet and bright, and as if he knew something else about it. And we three looked at each other and at him, and we smiled, too. And it made a nice minute.
"Clementina," said Madame Proudfit, like another minute that wasn't so very well acquainted with the one that was being, and then she presented the Brother-man. But instead of a regular society, say-what-you-ought-to-say answer to her greeting, the Brother-man says to her:
"Miss Proudfit, you shall arbitrate! Somebody left him to this lady and me—or to anybody like, or unlike us—on the train. Shall we find his own mother that has run away from him? Or shall we send him to an institution? Or shall we keep him? Which way," he says, smiling, "is the way that is the way?"
She looked up at him as if she knew, clear inside his words, what he was talking about.
[Pg 252]
"Are you," she ask' him, half merry, but all in earnest too, "are you going to decide with your heart or your head?"
"Why, with my soul, I hope," says the Brother-man, simple.
Miss Clementina nodded a little, and I saw her face all Summer-soft as she answered him.
"Then," she said, "almost nobody will tell you so, but—there's only one way."
"I know it," says he, gentle.
"I know it," says I, solemn.
We three stood looking at each other from close on the same star, knowing all over us that if you decide a thing with your head you'll probably shift a burden off; if you decide with your heart you'll probably give, give, give, like Madame Proudfit does, to pay somebody else liberal to take the burden; but if you decide it with your soul, you give your own self to whatever is going on. And you know that's the way that is the way.
All of a sudden, as if words that were not being said had got loose and were saying themselves anyway, the music—that had been tip-tapping along all the while since we came—started in, sudden and beautiful, with the Piano Lady and the Violin Man playing up there in the landing room. I don't know whether it was a lullaby—though I shouldn't be surprised if it was, because I think sometimes in this world things happen just like they were being[Pg 253] stage-managed by somebody that knows. But anyway—oh, it had a lullaby sound, a kind-of rocking, tender, just-you-and-me meaning; that ain't so very far from the you-and-me-and-all-of-us meaning when they're both said right and deep down.
I looked up at Miss Clementina and the Brother-man—as you do look up when some nice little thing has happened that you think whoever you're with will understand. But they didn't look back at me. They looked over to each other. They looked over to each other, swift at the first, but lasting43 long, and with the faces of both of them softening to Summer. And the music went heavenly-ing on, into the room, and into living, and into everything, and it was as if the whole minute was turned into its own spirit and then was said out in a sound.
Miss Clementina and the Brother-man looked away and down at the little chap that Miss Clementina was holding his hand. It was as if there was a pulse in the room—the Great Pulse that we all beat to, and that now and then we hear. But those two didn't see me at all; and all of a sudden I understood, how there was still another star that I didn't know anything about, and that they two were standing there together, they two and the little chap—but not me. Oh, it was wonderful—starting the way great things start, still and quiet like stars coming out. So still that they didn't either of them know it. And I felt as if everything was[Pg 254] some better and some holier than I had ever known.
Then Madame Proudfit, she leans out from her star, gracious and benign44, and certain sure that her star was the only one that had eternal truth inside it; and she spoke with a manner of waving her hand good natured to all the other little stars, including ours:
"You mad, mad, children!" she said. "You are mad. But you are very picturesque45 in your decisions, there's no denying that. He would probably be better cared for, more scientifically fed, and all that, in a good, hired, private family. But that's as you see it. Be mad, if you like—I'm here to watch over you!"
She had quite a nice tidy high point of view about it—but oh, it wasn't ours. It wasn't ours. We three—the Brother-man and Miss Clementina and me—we sort of hugged our own way. And the little chap he kept smiling, like he sort of hugged it too.
So that was the way it was. Miss Clementina and the Brother-man—that she'd been afraid to meet, 'count of thinking mebbe he didn't mean his writings for living—were in love from before they knew it. And I think it was part because they both meant life strong enough for living and not just for thinking, like the lukewarm folks do.
I kept the little chap with me the three months[Pg 255] or so that went by before the wedding—and I could hardly bear to let him go then.
"Why don't you keep him for them the first year or so?" Friendship Village ask' me. But there's some things even your own town doesn't always understand. "It's so unromantic for them to take him now," some of them even said.
But I says to them what I say now: "There's things that's bigger than romantic and there's things that's bigger than practical, so be some of both is mixed in right proportion. And the biggest thing I know in this world is when folks say over, 'You and me and all of us,' like voices, speaking to everybody's Father from inside the dark."
FOOTNOTE:
[9] Copyright, 1913, The Delineator.
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tapers
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| （长形物体的）逐渐变窄( taper的名词复数 )； 微弱的光； 极细的蜡烛 | |
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knights
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| 骑士； （中古时代的）武士( knight的名词复数 )； 骑士； 爵士； （国际象棋中）马 | |
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chivalry
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| n.骑士气概，侠义；（男人）对女人彬彬有礼，献殷勤 | |
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shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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ministries
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lark
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| n.云雀，百灵鸟；n.嬉戏，玩笑；vi.嬉戏 | |
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peppermints
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| n.薄荷( peppermint的名词复数 )；薄荷糖 | |
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automobile
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| n.汽车，机动车 | |
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soften
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| v.(使)变柔软；(使)变柔和 | |
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softening
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| 变软，软化 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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wagons
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| n.四轮的运货马车( wagon的名词复数 )；铁路货车；小手推车 | |
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ostrich
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| n.鸵鸟 | |
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junction
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| n.连接，接合；交叉点，接合处，枢纽站 | |
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parlor
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| n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅 | |
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almighty
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| adj.全能的，万能的；很大的，很强的 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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leisurely
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| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
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jolts
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| （使）摇动， （使）震惊( jolt的名词复数 ) | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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slanting
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| 倾斜的，歪斜的 | |
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contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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glossy
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| adj.平滑的；有光泽的 | |
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meditative
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| adj.沉思的，冥想的 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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strings
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| n.弦 | |
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awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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extravagantly
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| adv.挥霍无度地 | |
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hearth
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| n.壁炉炉床，壁炉地面 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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Undid
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| v. 解开, 复原 | |
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bonnet
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| n.无边女帽；童帽 | |
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canvassing
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| v.（在政治方面）游说( canvass的现在分词 )；调查（如选举前选民的）意见；为讨论而提出（意见等）；详细检查 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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rustle
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| v.沙沙作响；偷盗(牛、马等)；n.沙沙声声 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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lasting
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| adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持 | |
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benign
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| adj.善良的，慈祥的；良性的，无危险的 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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