Over the mantelpiece in his mother's room hung his father's picture, in a large gilt11 frame with an inside border of bright red plush. His father seemed to have been a merry-faced fellow, with inquiring eyes, plenty of hair, and a very nice mustache. This picture, under which his mother always kept a few flowers or some bit of living green, was Peter's sole acquaintance with his father, except when he trudged12 with his mother to the cemetery13 on fine Sundays, and traced with his small forefinger14 the name painted in black letters on a white wooden cross:
PETER DEVEREAUX CHAMPNEYS
Aged15 30 Years
It always gave small Peter an uncomfortable sensation to trace that name, which was also his own, on his father's headboard. It was as if something of himself stayed out there, very lonesomely, in the deserted16 burying-ground. The word "father" never conveyed to him any idea or image except a crayon portrait and a grave, he being a posthumous17 child. The really important figures filling the background of his early days were his mother and big black Emma Campbell.
Emma Campbell washed clothes in a large wooden tub set on a bench nailed between the two china-berry trees in the yard. Peter loved those china-berry trees, covered with masses of sweet-smelling lilac-colored blossoms in the spring, and with clusters of hard green berries in the summer. The beautiful feathery foliage18 made a pleasant shade for Emma Campbell's wash-tubs. Peter loved to watch her, she looked so important and so cheerful. While she worked she sang endless "speretuals," in a high, sweet voice that swooped19 bird-like up and down.
"I wants tuh climb up Ja-cob's la-ad-dah,
Ja-cob's la-ad-dah, Jacob's la-ad-dah,
I wants tuh climb up Ja-cob's la-ad-dah,
But I cain't—
Not un-tell I makes my peace wid de La-a-wd,
En I praise Him—de La-a-wd!
I 'll praise Him—tell I di-e,
I 'll praise Him—tell I die!
I 'll si-ng, Je-ee-ru-suh-lem!"
Emma Campbell would sing, and keep time with thumps20 and clouts21 of sudsy clothes. She boiled the clothes in the same large black iron pot in which she boiled crabs22 and shrimp23 in the summer-time. Peter always raked the chips for her fire, and the leaves and pine-cones mixed with them gave off a pleasant smoky smell. Emma had a happy fashion of roasting sweet potatoes under the wash-pot, and you could smell those, too, mingled24 with the soapy odor of the boiling clothes, which she sloshed around with a sawed-off broom-handle. Other smells came from over the cove1, of pine-trees, and sassafras, and bays, and that indescribable and clean odor which the winds bring out of the woods.
The whole place was full of pleasant noises, dear and familiar sounds of water running seaward or swinging back landward, always with odd gurglings and chucklings and small sucking noises, and runs and rushes; and of the myriad25 rustlings of the huge live-oaks hung with long gray moss26; and the sycamores frou-frouing like ladies' dresses; the palmettos rattled27 and clashed, with a sound like rain; the pines swayed one to another, and only in wild weather did they speak loudly, and then their voices were very high and airy. Peter liked the pines best of all. His earliest impression of beauty and of mystery was the moon walking "with silver-sandaled feet" over their tall heads. He loved it all—the little house, the trees, the tide-water, the smells, the sounds; in and out of which, keeping time to all, went the whi-r-rr of his mother's sewing-machine, and the scuff-scuffing of Emma Campbell's wash-board.
Sometimes his mother, pausing for a second, would turn to look at him, her tired, pale face lighting28 up with her tender mother-smile:
"What are you making now, Peter?" she would ask, as she watched his laborious29 efforts to put down on his slate his conception of the things he saw. She was always vitally interested in anything Peter said or did.
"Well, I started to make you—or maybe it was Emma. But I thought I'd better hang a tail on it and let it be the cat." He studied the result gravely. "I'll stick horns on it, and if they're very good horns I'll let it be the devil; if they're not, it can be Mis' Hughes's old cow."
After a while the things that Peter was always drawing began to bear what might be called a family resemblance to the things they were intended to represent. But as all children try to draw, nobody noticed that Peter Champneys tried harder than most, or that he couldn't put his fingers on a bit of paper and a stub of pencil without trying to draw something—a smear31 that vaguely32 resembled a tree, or a lopsided assortment33 of features that you presently made out to be a face.
But Peter Champneys, at a very early age, had to learn things less pleasant than drawing. That tiny house in Riverton represented all that was left of the once-great Champneys holdings, and the little widow was hard put to it to keep even that. Before he was seven Peter knew all those pitiful subterfuges34 wherewith genteel poverty tries to save its face; he had to watch his mother, who wasn't robust35, fight that bitter and losing fight which women of her sort wage with evil circumstances. Peter wore shoes only from the middle of November to the first of March; his clothes were presentable only because his mother had a genius for making things over. He wasn't really hungry, for nobody can starve in a small town in South Carolina; folks are too kindly36, too neighborly, too generous, for anything like that to happen. They have a tactful fashion of coming over with a plate of hot biscuit or a big bowl of steaming okra-and-tomato soup.
Often a bowl of that soup fetched in by a thoughtful neighbor, or an apronful of sweet potatoes Emma Campbell brought with her when she did the washing, kept Peter's backbone37 and wishbone from rubbing noses. But there were rainy days when neighbors didn't send in anything, Emma wasn't washing for them that week, sewing was scanty38, or taxes on the small holding had to be paid; and then Peter Champneys learned what an insatiable Shylock the human stomach can be. He learned what it means not to have enough warm covers on cold nights, nor warm clothes enough on cold days. He accepted it all without protest, or even wonder. These things were so because they were so.
On such occasions his mother drew him closer to her and comforted him after the immemorial South Carolina fashion, with accounts of the former greatness, glory, and grandeur39 of the Champneys family; always finishing with the solemn admonition that, no matter what happened, Peter must never, never forget Who He Was. Peter, who was a literal child in his way, inferred from these accounts that when the South Carolina Champneyses used to light up their big house for a party, before the war, the folks in North Carolina could see to read print by the reflection in the sky, and the people over in Georgia thought they were witnessing the Aurora40 Borealis.
She was a gentle, timid, pleasant little body, Peter's mother, with the mild manners and the soft voice of the South Carolina woman; and although the proverbial church-mouse was no poorer, Riverton would tell you, sympathetically, that Maria Champneys had her pride. For one thing, she was perfectly41 convinced that everybody who had ever been anybody in South Carolina was, somehow, related to the Champneyses. If they weren't,—well, it wasn't to their credit, that's all! She preferred to give them the benefit of the doubt. Her own grandfather had been a Virginian, a descendant of Pocahontas, of course, Pocahontas having been created by Divine Providence42 for the specific purpose of ancestoring Virginians. Just as everybody in New England is ancestored by one of those inevitable43 two brothers who came over, like sardines44 in a tin, in that amazingly elastic45 Mayflower. In the American Genesis this is the Sarah and these be the Abrahams, the mother and fathers of multitudes. They begin our Begats.
Mrs. Champneys sniffed46 at Mayflower origins, but she was firm on Pocahontas for herself, and adamant47 on Francis Marion for the Champneyses. The fact that the Indian Maid had but one bantling to her back, and the Swamp Fox none at all, didn't in the least disconcert her. If he had had any children, they would have ancestored the Champneyses; so there you were!
Peter, who had a fashion of thinking his own thoughts and then keeping them to himself, presently hit upon the truth. His was one of those Carolina coast families that, stripped by the war and irretrievably ruined by Reconstruction48, have ever since been steadily49 decreasing in men, mentality50, and money-power, each generation slipping a little farther down hill; until, in the case of the Champneyses, the family had just about reached rock-bottom in himself, the last of them. There had been, one understood, an uncle, his father's only brother, Chadwick Champneys. Peter's mother hadn't much to say about this Chadwick, who had been of a roving and restless nature, trying his hand at everything and succeeding in nothing. As poor as Job's turkey, what must he do on one of his prowls but marry some unknown girl from the Middle West, as poor as himself. After which he had slipped out of the lives of every one who knew him, and never been heard of again, except for the report that he had died somewhere out in Texas; or maybe it was Arizona or Idaho, or Mexico, or somewhere in South America. One didn't know.
Behold51 small Peter, then, the last of his name, "all the sisters of his father's house, and all the brothers, too." Little, thin, dark Peter, with his knock-knees, his large ears, his shock of black hair, and, fringed by thick black lashes52, eyes of a hazel so clear and rare that they were golden like topazes, only more beautiful. Leonardo would have loved to paint Peter's quiet face, with its shy, secret smile, and eyes that were the color of genius. Riverton thought him a homely53 child, with legs like those of one's grandmother's Chippendale chair, and eyes like a cat's. He was so quiet and reticent54 that nearly everybody except his mother and Emma Campbell thought him deficient55 in promise, and some even considered him "wanting."
Peter's reputation for hopelessness began when he went to school, but it didn't end there. He really was somewhat of a trial to an average school-teacher, who very often knows less of the human nature of a child than any other created being. Peter used the carelessly good-and-easy English one inherits in the South, but he couldn't understand the written rules of grammar to save his life; he was totally indifferent as to which states bounded and bordered which; and he had been known to spell "physician" with an f and two z's. But it was when confronted by a sum that Peter stood revealed in his true colors of a dunce!
"A boy buys chestnuts56 at one dollar and sixty cents the bushel and sells them at ten cents the quart, liquid measure.—Peter Champneys, what does he get?"
Peter Champneys stood up, and reflected.
"It all depends on the judge, and whether the boy's a white boy or a nigger," he decided57. "It's against the law to use liquid measure, you know. But I should think he'd get about thirty days, if he's a nigger."
Whereupon Peter Champneys went to the principal with a note, and received what was coming to him. When he returned to his seat, which was decidedly not comfortable just then, the teacher smiled a real, sure-enough schoolma'am smile, and remarked that she hoped our brilliant scholar, Mister Champneys, knew now what the boy got for his chestnuts. The class laughed as good scholars are expected to laugh on such occasions. Peter came to the conclusion that Herod, Nero, Bluebeard, and The Cruel Stepmother all probably began their bright careers as school-teachers.
Peter was a friendly child who didn't have the useful art of making friends. He used to watch more gifted children wistfully. He would so much have liked to play familiarly with the pretty, impertinent, pigtailed little girls, the bright, noisy, cock-sure little boys; but he didn't know how to set about it, and they didn't in the least encourage him to try. Children aren't by any means angels to one another. They are, as often as not, quite the reverse. Peter was loath59 to assert himself, and he was shoved aside as the gentle and the just usually are.
Being a loving child, he fell back upon the lesser60 creatures, and discovered that the Little Brothers do not judge one upon hearsay61, or clothes, or personal appearance. Theirs is the infallible test: one must be kind if one wishes to gain and to hold their love.
Martin Luther helped teach Peter that. Peter discovered Martin Luther, a shivering gray midget, in the cold dusk of a November evening, on the Riverton Road. The little beast rubbed against his legs, stuck up a ridiculous tail, and mewed hopefully. Peter, who needed friendliness62 himself, was unable to resist that appeal. He buttoned the forlorn kitten inside his old jacket, and, feeling the grateful warmth of his body, it cuddled and purred. The wise little cat didn't care the tip of a mouse's tail whether or not Peter was the congenital dunce his teacher had declared him to be, only that morning. The kitten knew he was just the sort of boy to show compassion63 to lost kittens, and trusted and loved him at sight.
His mother was doubtful as to the wisdom of adopting a third member into a family which could barely feed two without one going half hungry. Also, she disliked cats intensely. She was most horribly afraid of cats. She was just about to say that he'd have to give the kitten to somebody better able to care for it, but seeing the resigned and hopeless expression that crept into Peter's face, she said, instead, that she reckoned they could manage to feed the little wretch64, provided he kept it out of her room. Peter joyfully65 agreed, washed the cat in his own basin, fed it with a part of his own supper, and took it to bed with him, where it purred itself to sleep. Thus came Martin Luther to the house of Champneys.
When Peter had chores to do the cat scampered66 about him with, sidewise leapings and gambolings, and made his labor30 easier by seasoning67 it with harmless amusement. When he wrestled68 with his lessons Martin Luther sat sedately69 on the table and watched him, every now and then rubbing a sympathetic head against him. When he woke up at night in the shed room, he liked to put out his hand and touch the warm, soft, silky body near him. Peter adored his cat, which was to him a friend.
And then Martin Luther took to disappearing, mysteriously, for longer and longer intervals70. Peter was filled with apprehensions71, for Martin Luther wasn't a democratic soul; aside from his affection for Peter, the cat was as wild as a panther. The child was almost sick with anxiety. He wandered around Riverton hunting for the beast and calling it by name, a proceeding72 which further convinced Riverton folk that poor Maria Champneys's boy was not what one might call bright. Fancy carrying on like that about nothing but a cat! But Peter used to lie awake at night, lonesomely, and cry because he was afraid some evil had befallen the perverse73 creature of his affections. Then he prayed that God would look out for Martin Luther, if He hadn't already remembered to do so. The world of a sudden seemed a very big, sad, unfriendly place for a little boy to live in, when he couldn't even have a cat in it!
The disappearance74 of Martin Luther was Peter's first sorrow that his mother couldn't fully58 share, as he knew she didn't like cats. Martin Luther had known that, too, and had kept his distance. He hadn't even made friends with Emma Campbell, who loved cats to the extent of picking up other people's when their owners weren't looking. This cat had loved nobody but Peter, a fact that endeared it to him a thousandfold, and made its probable fate a darker grief.
One afternoon, when Martin Luther had been gone so long that Peter had about given up hopes of ever seeing him again, Emma Campbell, who had been washing in the yard, dashed into the house screeching75 that the woodshed was full of snakes.
Peter joyfully threw aside his grammar—snakes hadn't half the terror for him that substantives76 had—and rushed out to investigate, while his mother frantically77 besought78 him not to go near the woodshed, to get an ax, to run for the town marshal, to run and ring the fire-bell, to burn down that woodshed before they were all stung to death in their beds!
Cautiously Peter investigated. Perhaps a chicken-snake had crawled into the shed; perhaps a black-snake was hunting in there for rats; over there in that dark corner, behind sticks of pine, something was moving. And then he heard a sound he knew.
"Snakes nothin'!" shouted Peter, joyfully. "It's Martin Luther!" He got on his hands and knees and squirmed and wriggled80 himself behind the wood. There he remained, transfixed. His faith had received a shocking blow.
"Oh, Martin Luther!" cried Peter, with mingled joy and relief and reproach. "Oh, Martin Luther! How you've fooled me!" Martin Luther was a proud and purring mother.
Peter was bewildered and aggrieved81. "If I'd called him Mary or Martha in the beginning, I'd be glad for him to have as many kittens as he wanted to," he told his mother. "But how can I ever trust him again? He—he ain't Martin Luther any more!" And of a sudden he began to cry.
Emma Campbell, with a bundle of clean wet clothes on her brawny82 arm, shook her head at him.
"Lawd, no, Peter! 'T ain't de cat whut 's been foolin' you; it 's you whut 's been foolin' yo' own self. For, lo, fum de foundations ob dis worl', he was a she! Must n' blame de cat, chile. 'Cause ef you does," said Emma, waving an arm like a black mule's hind79 leg for strength, "ef you does, 'stead o' layin' de blame whah it natchelly b'longs—on yo' own ig'nance, Peter—you'll go thoo dis worl' wid every Gawd's tom-cat you comes by havin' kittens on you!"
"I feel like a father to those kittens," said Peter, gravely. But it was plain that Martin Luther's furry83 fourlegs had put Peter's nose out of joint84!
Things were getting worse and worse at school, too, although Peter considerately concealed85 this from his mother. He didn't tell her that the promotions86 she was so proud of had come to him simply because his teachers were so desperately87 anxious to get rid of him! And only to-day an incident had happened that seared his soul. He had been forced to stand out on the floor for twenty cruel, grueling minutes, to be a Horrible Example to a tittering class. It had been a long, wearisome day, when one's head ached because one's stomach was empty. Peter's eyes stung and smarted, his lip was bruised88 because he had bitten it to keep it from trembling, and his heart was more like a boil in his breast than a little boy's heart. When he was finally released for the day he didn't linger, but got away as fast as his thin legs would carry him. Once he was sure he was out of sight of all unfriendly eyes he let himself go and cried as he trudged along the Riverton Road. And there, in the afternoon sunlight, he made the acquaintance of the Red Admiral.
Just at that spot the Riverton Road was tree-shaded and bird-haunted. There were clumps89 of elder here and there, and cassena bushes, and tall fennel in the corners of the old worm-fence bordering the fields on each side. The worm-fence was of a polished, satiny, silvery gray, with trimmings of green vines clinging to it, wild-flowers peeping out of its crotches, and tall purple thistles swaying their heads toward it. On one especially tall thistle the Red Admiral had come to anchor.
He wore upon the skirts of his fine dark-colored frock-coat a red-orange border sewed with tiny round black buttons; across the middle of his fore-wings, like the sash of an order, was a broad red ribbon, and the spatter of white on the tips may have been his idea of epaulets; or maybe they were nature's Distinguished90 Service medals given him for conspicuous91 bravery, for there is no more gallant92 sailor of the skies than the Red Admiral.
When this gentleman comes to anchor on a flower he hoists93 his gay sails erect94 over his fat black back, in order that his under wings may be properly admired; for he knows very well that the cunningest craftsman95 that ever worked with mosaics96 and metals never turned out a better bit of jewel-work than those under wings.
It was this piece of painted perfection that caught Peter Champneys's unhappy eyes and brought him to a standstill. Peter forgot that he was the school dunce, that tears were still on his cheeks, that he had a headache and an empty stomach. His eyes began to shine unwontedly, brightening into a golden limpidity97, and his lips puckered98 into a smile.
The Red Admiral, if one might judge by his unrubbed wings and the new and glossy99 vividness of his colorings, may have been some nine hours old. Peter, by the entry in his mother's Bible, was nine years old. Quite instinctively100 Peter's brown fingers groped for a pencil. At the feel of it he experienced a thrill of satisfaction. Down on his knees he went, and crept forward, nearer and nearer; for one must come as the wind comes who would approach the Red Admiral. Peter had no paper, so a fly-leaf of his geography would have to do. All athrill, he worked with his bit of pencil; and on the fly-leaf grew the worm-fence with the blackberry bramble climbing along its corners, and the fennel, and the elder bushes near by; and in the foreground the tall thistle, with the butterfly upon it. The Red Admiral is a gourmet101; he lingers daintily over his meals; so Peter had time to make a careful sketch102 of him. This done, he sketched103 in the field beyond, and the buzzard hanging motionless in the sky.
It was crude and defective104, of course, and a casual eye wouldn't have glanced twice at it, but a true teacher would instantly have recognized the value, not of what it performed, but of what it presaged105. For all its faults it was bold and rapid, like the Admiral's flight, and it had the Admiral's airy grace and freedom. It seized the outlines of things with unerring precision.
The child kneeling in the dust of the Riverton Road, with an old geography open on his knee, felt in his thin breast a faint flutter, as of wings. He looked at the sketch; he watched the Red Admiral finish his meal and go scudding106 down the wind. And he knew he had found the one thing he could do, the one thing he wanted to do, that he must and would do. It was as if the butterfly had been a fairy, to open for Peter a tiny door of hope. He wrote under the sketch:
Jun. 2, 189- This day I notissed the red and blak
buterfly on the thissel.
He stared at this for a while, and added:
P.S. In futcher watch for this buterfly witch mite107 be a fary.
Then he went trudging108 homeward. He was smiling, his own shy, secret smile. He held his head erect and looked ahead of him as if in the far, far distance he had seen something, a beckoning109 something, toward which he was to strive. Barefooted Peter, poverty-stricken, lonely Peter for the first time glimpsed the purple heights.
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1
cove
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| n.小海湾，小峡谷 | |
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coves
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| n.小海湾( cove的名词复数 )；家伙 | |
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tacked
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| 用平头钉钉( tack的过去式和过去分词 )； 附加，增补； 帆船抢风行驶，用粗线脚缝 | |
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slate
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| n.板岩，石板，石片，石板色，候选人名单；adj.暗蓝灰色的，含板岩的；vt.用石板覆盖，痛打，提名，预订 | |
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jigging
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| n.跳汰选，簸选v.（使）上下急动( jig的现在分词 ) | |
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blur
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| n.模糊不清的事物；vt.使模糊，使看不清楚 | |
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patchwork
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| n.混杂物；拼缝物 | |
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subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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walnut
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| n.胡桃，胡桃木，胡桃色，茶色 | |
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wavy
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| adj.有波浪的，多浪的，波浪状的，波动的，不稳定的 | |
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gilt
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| adj.镀金的；n.金边证券 | |
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trudged
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| vt.& vi.跋涉，吃力地走（trudge的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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forefinger
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| n.食指 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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posthumous
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| adj.遗腹的；父亡后出生的；死后的，身后的 | |
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foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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swooped
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| 俯冲，猛冲( swoop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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thumps
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| n.猪肺病；砰的重击声( thump的名词复数 )v.重击， （指心脏）急速跳动( thump的第三人称单数 ) | |
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clouts
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| n.猛打( clout的名词复数 )；敲打；（尤指政治上的）影响；（用手或硬物的）击v.（尤指用手）猛击，重打( clout的第三人称单数 ) | |
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crabs
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| n.蟹( crab的名词复数 )；阴虱寄生病；蟹肉v.捕蟹( crab的第三人称单数 ) | |
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shrimp
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| n.虾，小虾；矮小的人 | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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myriad
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| adj.无数的；n.无数，极大数量 | |
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moss
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| n.苔，藓，地衣 | |
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rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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lighting
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| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
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laborious
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| adj.吃力的，努力的，不流畅 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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smear
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| v.涂抹；诽谤，玷污；n.污点；诽谤，污蔑 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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assortment
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| n.分类，各色俱备之物，聚集 | |
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subterfuges
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| n.（用说谎或欺骗以逃脱责备、困难等的）花招，遁词( subterfuge的名词复数 ) | |
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robust
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| adj.强壮的，强健的，粗野的，需要体力的，浓的 | |
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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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37
backbone
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| n.脊骨，脊柱，骨干；刚毅，骨气 | |
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scanty
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| adj.缺乏的，仅有的，节省的，狭小的，不够的 | |
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39
grandeur
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| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
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40
aurora
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| n.极光 | |
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41
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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42
providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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43
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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44
sardines
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| n. 沙丁鱼 | |
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45
elastic
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| n.橡皮圈，松紧带；adj.有弹性的；灵活的 | |
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46
sniffed
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| v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的过去式和过去分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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47
adamant
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| adj.坚硬的，固执的 | |
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48
reconstruction
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| n.重建，再现，复原 | |
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49
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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50
mentality
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| n.心理，思想，脑力 | |
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51
behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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52
lashes
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| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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53
homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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54
reticent
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| adj.沉默寡言的；言不如意的 | |
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deficient
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| adj.不足的，不充份的，有缺陷的 | |
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56
chestnuts
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| n.栗子( chestnut的名词复数 )；栗色；栗树；栗色马 | |
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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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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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loath
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| adj.不愿意的；勉强的 | |
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lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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hearsay
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| n.谣传，风闻 | |
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62
friendliness
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| n.友谊，亲切，亲密 | |
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compassion
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| n.同情，怜悯 | |
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wretch
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| n.可怜的人，不幸的人；卑鄙的人 | |
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joyfully
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| adv. 喜悦地, 高兴地 | |
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scampered
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| v.蹦蹦跳跳地跑，惊惶奔跑( scamper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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67
seasoning
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| n.调味；调味料；增添趣味之物 | |
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wrestled
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| v.（与某人）搏斗( wrestle的过去式和过去分词 )；扭成一团；扭打；（与…）摔跤 | |
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sedately
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| adv.镇静地，安详地 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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apprehensions
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| 疑惧 | |
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proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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perverse
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| adj.刚愎的；坚持错误的，行为反常的 | |
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disappearance
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| n.消失，消散，失踪 | |
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screeching
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| v.发出尖叫声( screech的现在分词 )；发出粗而刺耳的声音；高叫 | |
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76
substantives
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| n.作名词用的词或词组（substantive的复数形式） | |
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frantically
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| ad.发狂地, 发疯地 | |
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78
besought
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| v.恳求，乞求（某事物）( beseech的过去式和过去分词 )；(beseech的过去式与过去分词) | |
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hind
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| adj.后面的，后部的 | |
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wriggled
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| v.扭动，蠕动，蜿蜒行进( wriggle的过去式和过去分词 )；（使身体某一部位）扭动；耍滑不做，逃避（应做的事等） | |
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81
aggrieved
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| adj.愤愤不平的，受委屈的；悲痛的；（在合法权利方面）受侵害的v.令委屈，令苦恼，侵害( aggrieve的过去式)；令委屈，令苦恼，侵害( aggrieve的过去式和过去分词) | |
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82
brawny
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| adj.强壮的 | |
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83
furry
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| adj.毛皮的；似毛皮的；毛皮制的 | |
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84
joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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85
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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86
promotions
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| 促进( promotion的名词复数 )； 提升； 推广； 宣传 | |
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desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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88
bruised
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| [医]青肿的，瘀紫的 | |
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89
clumps
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| n.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的名词复数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声v.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的第三人称单数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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91
conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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gallant
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| adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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93
hoists
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| 把…吊起，升起( hoist的第三人称单数 ) | |
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94
erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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craftsman
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| n.技工，精于一门工艺的匠人 | |
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96
mosaics
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| n.马赛克( mosaic的名词复数 )；镶嵌；镶嵌工艺；镶嵌图案 | |
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limpidity
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| n.清澈，透明 | |
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98
puckered
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| v.（使某物）起褶子或皱纹( pucker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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99
glossy
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| adj.平滑的；有光泽的 | |
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100
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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101
gourmet
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| n.食物品尝家；adj.出于美食家之手的 | |
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102
sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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103
sketched
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| v.草拟（sketch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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104
defective
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| adj.有毛病的，有问题的，有瑕疵的 | |
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105
presaged
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| v.预示，预兆( presage的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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106
scudding
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| n.刮面v.（尤指船、舰或云彩）笔直、高速而平稳地移动( scud的现在分词 ) | |
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107
mite
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| n.极小的东西；小铜币 | |
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108
trudging
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| vt.& vi.跋涉，吃力地走（trudge的现在分词形式） | |
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109
beckoning
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| adj.引诱人的，令人心动的v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的现在分词 ) | |
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