THE LITTLE GREEN LADY FROG

 Billy Bull Frog had a deep bass¹ voice, and every night he would sit on a big flat rock amid tall sedge grass and sing. There was a little green lady frog that sang a beautiful soprano, but, you see, his voice was so loud and strong and deep that hardly any one could hear her when she sang. She could hardly ever hear herself, for the louder she sang the more noise Billy would make, till finally the little green lady frog wouldn't sing at all.

 

But this did not make Billy feel badly, because he loved to hear his own voice so much. The little green lady frog would sit very still on her lily pad, and would not even look at Billy when he sang. But, oh, dear me! he was so conceited² about his own voice that he thought the little green lady frog was jealous of him.

 

She wasn't at all, and Billy was wrong, and was acting³ very, very foolishly. The real truth of the matter was that the little green lady frog had heard a tree toad⁴ singing in a tree quite close to the lake, and she thought his voice very beautiful, because it was a high tenor⁵, and it sounded much better when she sang with him than it did when she sang with Billy Bull Frog.

 

At first she hardly dared sing with Tommy Tree Toad, because she was afraid of Billy Bull Frog, and then, too, she didn't know Tommy Tree Toad very well.

 

But after a while she became bolder and one night, when the moon was shining brightly in the sky and throwing a silver path from the water right up to Tommy Tree Toad's tree, she climbed up the bank and stood on the silver path of the moon and listened while Tommy sang his most beautiful song.

 

And the longer she waited the more she wanted to go close up to the big tree and sing with Tommy. He kept singing in his beautiful tenor voice, "Kum-kum, kum-kum!" and at last she hopped⁶ along the silver way up to the big tree. And then they sang a lovely duet together and all the frogs in the lake held their breath because it was so sweet.

 

1 bass   

n.男低音(歌手)；低音乐器；低音大提琴

参考例句：

• He answered my question in a surprisingly deep bass.他用一种低得出奇的声音回答我的问题。
• The bass was to give a concert in the park.那位男低音歌唱家将在公园中举行音乐会。

2 conceited   

adj.自负的，骄傲自满的

参考例句：

• He could not bear that they should be so conceited.他们这样自高自大他受不了。
• I'm not as conceited as so many people seem to think.我不像很多人认为的那么自负。

3 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

4 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。

5 tenor   

n.男高音（歌手），次中音（乐器），要旨，大意

参考例句：

• The tenor of his speech was that war would come.他讲话的大意是战争将要发生。
• The four parts in singing are soprano,alto,tenor and bass.唱歌的四个声部是女高音、女低音、男高音和男低音。

6 hopped   

跳上[下]( hop的过去式和过去分词 )； 单足蹦跳； 齐足（或双足）跳行； 摘葎草花

参考例句：

• He hopped onto a car and wanted to drive to town. 他跳上汽车想开向市区。
• He hopped into a car and drove to town. 他跳进汽车，向市区开去。