chapter 14

At sixteen Mermaid¹ was not adequately to be described by Longfellow’s lines about the maiden²
Standing³ with reluctant feet
Where the brook⁴ and river meet.

She was, without doubt, a girl still, despite her height of five feet two inches, despite the coiled beauty of her coppery hair and the wise young glance of her blue eyes. The three freckles⁵ about her nose, the dimples when she smiled, the faint colour in her cheeks, and the slender straightness of her body were wholly girlish; so was her general attitude toward older people. It was only when she was with certain boys slightly her seniors that a sort of womanliness seemed her predominant quality. The nature of this grown-up atmosphere varied⁶. With Guy Vanton, who was twenty-two, Mermaid would[147] have appeared to most onlookers⁷ to be rather sisterly. With Tommy Lupton, who was twenty, she was simply an attractive young person of the other sex. But in her attitude toward seventeen-to-eighteen-year-old Richard Hand the girl alternated the r?le of comrade and equal with that of motherly management. These variations were not a matter of ages but of personalities⁸. They were determined⁹ by the fact that Guy Vanton, from a lonely boyhood, was developing into a lonely young man; that Tommy Lupton was perfectly¹¹ normal and a healthy youth who was Mermaid’s senior by an interval¹² which, between a boy and a girl or a man and a woman, is without significance; by the further fact that Dickie Hand needed special treatment and looking after.

For Dickie was a gifted boy who was always on a seesaw¹³. He had his ups and downs of which his grasping old father was but seldom aware, and could have viewed with nothing but contempt. Nor was Dickie likely to get much good of his mother’s philosophy. All her life Mrs. Hand had supposed that everything was for the best; and this opiate of age is no drug to feed to youth. Dickie, whose spirits were either aloft in the air or bumping the ground, could not play seesaw alone. Mermaid recognized as much and seated herself on the other end of the plank¹⁴. Occasionally Dickie would forget the equilibrium¹⁵ necessary and would make more or less horizontal advances toward her. To restore the[148] balance Mermaid had to meet him halfway¹⁶, but she seized the first opportunity to remind him that his place was at a distance.

At sixteen Mermaid was halfway through High School at Patchogue. The question of her future remained undecided. Cap’n Smiley, her Dad, and his sister, Keturah, quarrelled mildly about it. The keeper of the Lone¹⁰ Cove¹⁷ Coast Guard Station did not like the notion of losing sight of his adopted daughter except for holidays. Keturah thought the girl ought to go away to school.

“Don’t be a fool, John,” she counselled the keeper. “The child will be home two months or more in summer. You won’t be on duty on the beach then, and we can all four—you and she and Hosea and myself—be together. She’s got to have something in her life besides Blue Port, and she’s got to have something in her life besides those three boys. They’re all right as boys go,” she added in qualification, “but I don’t suppose you want her to stay here and spend her life as your daughter and my niece, the Vanton boy’s sister, Tommy Lupton’s sweetheart, and Dickie Hand’s mother!”

“Seems to me, Keturah,” interjected her new husband, Ho Ha, “being all those things would be considerable.”

“It isn’t anything to be somebody,” his wife answered. “On the other hand, there’s a lot of tomfoolery in the[149] talk of ‘doing’ this and that. There’s no sense in doing anything unless it’s going to enable you to be somebody, and there’s no sense in being somebody unless it enables you to do something.”

“Hold on, hold on,” protested Ho Ha. “You go too fast for me to follow you. I didn’t marry you for your philosophy.”

“Well, you have to take my philosophy along with the rest,” said Keturah, briskly. “I didn’t marry you to bake pancakes every morning of my life, but I guess I’ll have to.”

“There’s a lot of philosophy in pancakes,” asserted Ho Ha. “They go flip-flop, and that’s the way life goes.”

“That’s why these people who can turn somersaults gracefully¹⁸ always get along well, eh?” said Cap’n Smiley with a grin.

“To stick to the subject and not to the griddle,” resumed Keturah, “the child ought to go away this fall. She likes chemistry and she likes cooking and she mixes all sorts of messes in both. I live in constant dread¹⁹ that she’ll serve me some good-tasting poison by accident or that the baked potatoes will explode. I don’t know anything about this scientific cookery you hear so much about, but Mermaid might as well get what there is in it. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, though I must say that the job of filling his stomach is about all a woman could be[150] expected to handle.” She looked at Ho Ha, a notable eater.

“Well, then, I think she might spend this summer on the beach with me—with all of us,” amended²⁰ Cap’n Smiley. “I’ll be there anyway this year. You and Hosea and Mermaid can take the Biggles house, or something more sizable if you want; there’s plenty of little houses within a quarter of a mile of the station.”

Mermaid, entering, had heard her Dad’s suggestion and clapped her hands in applause.

“That’ll be splendid!” she cried. “Captain Vanton has taken a little bungalow²¹, and Guy is going to be over there; Tommy Lupton and Dickie Hand are going to spend August camping on the beach; so we’ll have company all summer!”

The three adults exchanged amused glances.

1 mermaid   

n.美人鱼

参考例句：

• How popular would that girl be with the only mermaid mom!和人鱼妈妈在一起，那个女孩会有多受欢迎！
• The little mermaid wasn't happy because she didn't want to wait.小美人鱼不太高兴，因为她等不及了。

2 maiden   

n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的

参考例句：

• The prince fell in love with a fair young maiden.王子爱上了一位年轻美丽的少女。
• The aircraft makes its maiden flight tomorrow.这架飞机明天首航。

3 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

4 brook   

n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让

参考例句：

• In our room we could hear the murmur of a distant brook.在我们房间能听到远处小溪汩汩的流水声。
• The brook trickled through the valley.小溪涓涓流过峡谷。

5 freckles   

n.雀斑，斑点( freckle的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• She had a wonderful clear skin with an attractive sprinkling of freckles. 她光滑的皮肤上有几处可爱的小雀斑。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• When she lies in the sun, her face gets covered in freckles. 她躺在阳光下时，脸上布满了斑点。 来自《简明英汉词典》

6 varied   

adj.多样的，多变化的

参考例句：

• The forms of art are many and varied.艺术的形式是多种多样的。
• The hotel has a varied programme of nightly entertainment.宾馆有各种晚间娱乐活动。

7 onlookers   

n.旁观者，观看者( onlooker的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• A crowd of onlookers gathered at the scene of the crash. 在撞车地点聚集了一大群围观者。
• The onlookers stood at a respectful distance. 旁观者站在一定的距离之外，以示尊敬。

8 personalities   

n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There seemed to be a degree of personalities in her remarks.她话里有些人身攻击的成分。
• Personalities are not in good taste in general conversation.在一般的谈话中诽谤他人是不高尚的。

9 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

10 lone   

adj.孤寂的，单独的；唯一的

参考例句：

• A lone sea gull flew across the sky.一只孤独的海鸥在空中飞过。
• She could see a lone figure on the deserted beach.她在空旷的海滩上能看到一个孤独的身影。

11 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

12 interval   

n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息

参考例句：

• The interval between the two trees measures 40 feet.这两棵树的间隔是40英尺。
• There was a long interval before he anwsered the telephone.隔了好久他才回了电话。

13 seesaw   

n.跷跷板

参考例句：

• Prices have gone up and down like a seesaw this year.今年的价格像跷跷板一样时涨时跌。
• The children are playing at seesaw.孩子们在玩跷跷板。

14 plank   

n.板条，木板，政策要点，政纲条目

参考例句：

• The plank was set against the wall.木板靠着墙壁。
• They intend to win the next election on the plank of developing trade.他们想以发展贸易的纲领来赢得下次选举。

15 equilibrium   

n.平衡，均衡，相称，均势，平静

参考例句：

• Change in the world around us disturbs our inner equilibrium.我们周围世界的变化扰乱了我们内心的平静。
• This is best expressed in the form of an equilibrium constant.这最好用平衡常数的形式来表示。

16 halfway   

adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途

参考例句：

• We had got only halfway when it began to get dark.走到半路，天就黑了。
• In study the worst danger is give up halfway.在学习上，最忌讳的是有始无终。

17 cove   

n.小海湾，小峡谷

参考例句：

• The shore line is wooded,olive-green,a pristine cove.岸边一带林木蓊郁，嫩绿一片，好一个山外的小海湾。
• I saw two children were playing in a cove.我看到两个小孩正在一个小海湾里玩耍。

18 gracefully   

ad.大大方方地；优美地

参考例句：

• She sank gracefully down onto a cushion at his feet. 她优雅地坐到他脚旁的垫子上。
• The new coats blouse gracefully above the hip line. 新外套在臀围线上优美地打着褶皱。

19 dread   

vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧

参考例句：

• We all dread to think what will happen if the company closes.我们都不敢去想一旦公司关门我们该怎么办。
• Her heart was relieved of its blankest dread.她极度恐惧的心理消除了。

20 Amended   

adj. 修正的 动词amend的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• He asked to see the amended version. 他要求看修订本。
• He amended his speech by making some additions and deletions. 他对讲稿作了些增删修改。

21 bungalow   

n.平房，周围有阳台的木造小平房

参考例句：

• A bungalow does not have an upstairs.平房没有上层。
• The old couple sold that large house and moved into a small bungalow.老两口卖掉了那幢大房子，搬进了小平房。