XII NO ONE BELIEVES PETER RABBIT

 

 

Peter Rabbit sat in his secret place in the middle of the Old Briar-patch. Peter was doing some very hard thinking. He ought to have been asleep, for he had been out the whole night long. But instead of sleeping, he was wide awake and thinking and thinking.

 

You see early the night before Boomer the Nighthawk had told Peter that Sammy Jay was up in the far-away Old Pasture. Boomer had seen him going to bed there and had come straight down to tell Peter. This was great news, and Peter could hardly wait for Boomer to stop talking, he was so anxious to spread the news over the Green Meadows and through the Green Forest, for Peter is a great gossip and cannot keep his tongue still.

 

So he had hurried this way and that way, telling every one he met how Sammy

Jay had moved away to the Old Pasture. But no one believed him.

 

"Wait and see! Wait and see!" said Jimmy Skunk¹.

 

"It's just a trick," said Bobby Coon.

 

"But Boomer the Nighthawk saw him up there going to bed and talked with him!" cried Peter Rabbit.

 

"Perhaps he did and then again perhaps he didn't," replied Bobby Coon, carefully washing an ear of sweet milky² corn that he had brought down to the Laughing Brook³ from Farmer Brown's corn-field, for Bobby Coon is very, very neat and always washes his food before eating. "For my part," he continued, "I believe that Boomer the Nighthawk just made up that story to help Sammy Jay fool us."

 

"But that would be a wrong story, and I don't believe that Boomer would do anything like that!" cried Peter.

 

Just then there was a shrill⁴ scream of "Thief! thief! thief!" over in the alder⁵ bushes. It certainly sounded like Sammy Jay's voice.

 

"What did I tell you? Now what do you think?" cried Bobby Coon.

 

Peter didn't know what to think, and he said so. He left Bobby to eat his corn and spent the rest of the night telling every one he met what Boomer the Nighthawk had said, but of course no one believed it, and every one laughed at him, for hadn't they heard Sammy Jay screaming that very night?

 

So now Peter sat in the Old Briar-patch thinking and thinking, when he should have been asleep. Finally he yawned and stretched and then started along one of his private little paths.

 

"I'll just run up to the Green Forest and try to find Sammy Jay," he said.

 

So Peter hunted and hunted all through the Green Forest for Sammy Jay, and asked everybody he met if they had seen Sammy. But no one had, though every one took pains to tell Peter that they had heard Sammy in the night. At last Peter found Sticky-toes the Tree Toad⁶. He was muttering and grumbling⁷ to himself, and he didn't see Peter. Peter stopped to listen, which was, of course, a very wrong thing to do, and what he heard gave Peter an idea.

1 skunk   

n.臭鼬，黄鼠狼；v.使惨败，使得零分；烂醉如泥

参考例句：

• That was a rotten thing to do, you skunk!那种事做得太缺德了，你这卑鄙的家伙！
• The skunk gives off an unpleasant smell when attacked.受到攻击时臭鼬会发出一种难闻的气味。

2 milky   

adj.牛奶的，多奶的；乳白色的

参考例句：

• Alexander always has milky coffee at lunchtime.亚历山大总是在午餐时喝掺奶的咖啡。
• I like a hot milky drink at bedtime.我喜欢睡前喝杯热奶饮料。

3 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。

4 shrill   

adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫

参考例句：

• Whistles began to shrill outside the barn.哨声开始在谷仓外面尖叫。
• The shrill ringing of a bell broke up the card game on the cutter.刺耳的铃声打散了小汽艇的牌局。

5 alder   

n.赤杨树

参考例句：

• He gave john some alder bark.他给了约翰一些桤木树皮。
• Several coppice plantations have been seeded with poplar,willow,and alder.好几个灌木林场都种上了白杨、柳树和赤杨。

6 toad   

n.蟾蜍，癞蛤蟆

参考例句：

• Both the toad and frog are amphibian.蟾蜍和青蛙都是两栖动物。
• Many kinds of toad hibernate in winter.许多种蟾蜍在冬天都会冬眠。

7 grumbling   

adj. 喃喃鸣不平的, 出怨言的

参考例句：

• She's always grumbling to me about how badly she's treated at work. 她总是向我抱怨她在工作中如何受亏待。
• We didn't hear any grumbling about the food. 我们没听到过对食物的抱怨。