“You’d get tired of it,” said Marilla, with a sigh.
“I daresay; but just now I feel that it would take me a long time to get tired of it, if it were all as charming as today. Everything loves June. Davy-boy, why this melancholy4 November face in blossom-time?”
“At ten years? Dear me, how sad!”
“I’m not making fun,” said Davy with dignity. “I’m dis—dis—discouraged”—bringing out the big word with a valiant6 effort.
“Why and wherefore?” asked Anne, sitting down beside him.
“‘Cause the new teacher that come when Mr. Holmes got sick give me ten sums to do for Monday. It’ll take me all day tomorrow to do them. It isn’t fair to have to work Saturdays. Milty Boulter said he wouldn’t do them, but Marilla says I’ve got to. I don’t like Miss Carson a bit.”
“Don’t talk like that about your teacher, Davy Keith,” said Mrs. Rachel severely7. “Miss Carson is a very fine girl. There is no nonsense about her.”
“That doesn’t sound very attractive,” laughed Anne. “I like people to have a little nonsense about them. But I’m inclined to have a better opinion of Miss Carson than you have. I saw her in prayer-meeting last night, and she has a pair of eyes that can’t always look sensible. Now, Davy-boy, take heart of grace. ‘Tomorrow will bring another day’ and I’ll help you with the sums as far as in me lies. Don’t waste this lovely hour ‘twixt light and dark worrying over arithmetic.”
“Well, I won’t,” said Davy, brightening up. “If you help me with the sums I’ll have ‘em done in time to go fishing with Milty. I wish old Aunt Atossa’s funeral was tomorrow instead of today. I wanted to go to it ‘cause Milty said his mother said Aunt Atossa would be sure to rise up in her coffin8 and say sarcastic9 things to the folks that come to see her buried. But Marilla said she didn’t.”
“Poor Atossa laid in her coffin peaceful enough,” said Mrs. Lynde solemnly. “I never saw her look so pleasant before, that’s what. Well, there weren’t many tears shed over her, poor old soul. The Elisha Wrights are thankful to be rid of her, and I can’t say I blame them a mite10.”
“It seems to me a most dreadful thing to go out of the world and not leave one person behind you who is sorry you are gone,” said Anne, shuddering11.
“Nobody except her parents ever loved poor Atossa, that’s certain, not even her husband,” averred12 Mrs. Lynde. “She was his fourth wife. He’d sort of got into the habit of marrying. He only lived a few years after he married her. The doctor said he died of dyspepsia, but I shall always maintain that he died of Atossa’s tongue, that’s what. Poor soul, she always knew everything about her neighbors, but she never was very well acquainted with herself. Well, she’s gone anyhow; and I suppose the next excitement will be Diana’s wedding.”
“It seems funny and horrible to think of Diana’s being married,” sighed Anne, hugging her knees and looking through the gap in the Haunted Wood to the light that was shining in Diana’s room.
“I don’t see what’s horrible about it, when she’s doing so well,” said Mrs. Lynde emphatically. “Fred Wright has a fine farm and he is a model young man.”
“He certainly isn’t the wild, dashing, wicked, young man Diana once wanted to marry,” smiled Anne. “Fred is extremely good.”
“That’s just what he ought to be. Would you want Diana to marry a wicked man? Or marry one yourself?”
“Oh, no. I wouldn’t want to marry anybody who was wicked, but I think I’d like it if he COULD be wicked and WOULDN’T. Now, Fred is HOPELESSLY good.”
“You’ll have more sense some day, I hope,” said Marilla.
Marilla spoke13 rather bitterly. She was grievously disappointed. She knew Anne had refused Gilbert Blythe. Avonlea gossip buzzed over the fact, which had leaked out, nobody knew how. Perhaps Charlie Sloane had guessed and told his guesses for truth. Perhaps Diana had betrayed it to Fred and Fred had been indiscreet. At all events it was known; Mrs. Blythe no longer asked Anne, in public or private, if she had heard lately from Gilbert, but passed her by with a frosty bow. Anne, who had always liked Gilbert’s merry, young-hearted mother, was grieved in secret over this. Marilla said nothing; but Mrs. Lynde gave Anne many exasperated14 digs about it, until fresh gossip reached that worthy15 lady, through the medium of Moody16 Spurgeon MacPherson’s mother, that Anne had another “beau” at college, who was rich and handsome and good all in one. After that Mrs. Rachel held her tongue, though she still wished in her inmost heart that Anne had accepted Gilbert. Riches were all very well; but even Mrs. Rachel, practical soul though she was, did not consider them the one essential. If Anne “liked” the Handsome Unknown better than Gilbert there was nothing more to be said; but Mrs. Rachel was dreadfully afraid that Anne was going to make the mistake of marrying for money. Marilla knew Anne too well to fear this; but she felt that something in the universal scheme of things had gone sadly awry17.
“What is to be, will be,” said Mrs. Rachel gloomily, “and what isn’t to be happens sometimes. I can’t help believing it’s going to happen in Anne’s case, if Providence18 doesn’t interfere19, that’s what.” Mrs. Rachel sighed. She was afraid Providence wouldn’t interfere; and she didn’t dare to.
Anne had wandered down to the Dryad’s Bubble and was curled up among the ferns at the root of the big white birch where she and Gilbert had so often sat in summers gone by. He had gone into the newspaper office again when college closed, and Avonlea seemed very dull without him. He never wrote to her, and Anne missed the letters that never came. To be sure, Roy wrote twice a week; his letters were exquisite20 compositions which would have read beautifully in a memoir21 or biography. Anne felt herself more deeply in love with him than ever when she read them; but her heart never gave the queer, quick, painful bound at sight of his letters which it had given one day when Mrs. Hiram Sloane had handed her out an envelope addressed in Gilbert’s black, upright handwriting. Anne had hurried home to the east gable and opened it eagerly—to find a typewritten copy of some college society report—“only that and nothing more.” Anne flung the harmless screed22 across her room and sat down to write an especially nice epistle to Roy.
Diana was to be married in five more days. The gray house at Orchard Slope was in a turmoil23 of baking and brewing24 and boiling and stewing25, for there was to be a big, old-timey wedding. Anne, of course, was to be bridesmaid, as had been arranged when they were twelve years old, and Gilbert was coming from Kingsport to be best man. Anne was enjoying the excitement of the various preparations, but under it all she carried a little heartache. She was, in a sense, losing her dear old chum; Diana’s new home would be two miles from Green Gables, and the old constant companionship could never be theirs again. Anne looked up at Diana’s light and thought how it had beaconed to her for many years; but soon it would shine through the summer twilights no more. Two big, painful tears welled up in her gray eyes.
“Oh,” she thought, “how horrible it is that people have to grow up—and marry—and CHANGE!”
点击收听单词发音
1 orchard | |
n.果园,果园里的全部果树,(美俚)棒球场 | |
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2 diligently | |
ad.industriously;carefully | |
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3 depressed | |
adj.沮丧的,抑郁的,不景气的,萧条的 | |
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4 melancholy | |
n.忧郁,愁思;adj.令人感伤(沮丧)的,忧郁的 | |
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5 pessimist | |
n.悲观者;悲观主义者;厌世 | |
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6 valiant | |
adj.勇敢的,英勇的;n.勇士,勇敢的人 | |
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7 severely | |
adv.严格地;严厉地;非常恶劣地 | |
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8 coffin | |
n.棺材,灵柩 | |
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9 sarcastic | |
adj.讥讽的,讽刺的,嘲弄的 | |
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10 mite | |
n.极小的东西;小铜币 | |
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11 shuddering | |
v.战栗( shudder的现在分词 );发抖;(机器、车辆等)突然震动;颤动 | |
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12 averred | |
v.断言( aver的过去式和过去分词 );证实;证明…属实;作为事实提出 | |
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13 spoke | |
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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14 exasperated | |
adj.恼怒的 | |
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15 worthy | |
adj.(of)值得的,配得上的;有价值的 | |
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16 moody | |
adj.心情不稳的,易怒的,喜怒无常的 | |
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17 awry | |
adj.扭曲的,错的 | |
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18 providence | |
n.深谋远虑,天道,天意;远见;节约;上帝 | |
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19 interfere | |
v.(in)干涉,干预;(with)妨碍,打扰 | |
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20 exquisite | |
adj.精美的;敏锐的;剧烈的,感觉强烈的 | |
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21 memoir | |
n.[pl.]回忆录,自传;记事录 | |
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22 screed | |
n.长篇大论 | |
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23 turmoil | |
n.骚乱,混乱,动乱 | |
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24 brewing | |
n. 酿造, 一次酿造的量 动词brew的现在分词形式 | |
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25 stewing | |
炖 | |
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