STORY XI CURLY AND THE CHESTNUTS

"Why, Curly," exclaimed the nice old lady owl¹ school teacher one day, when the class in drawing was doing its lesson. "Why, Curly Twistytail! I'm certainly surprised at you!"

 

Of course, all the animal children looked over at the little piggie boy, and at his brother Flop², also; but Flop had done nothing. And what do you suppose it was that Curly had done?

 

Why, instead of drawing a picture of a pail of sour milk, as the teacher had told him to do, he had made a picture of a monkey-doodle sitting on top of a Jack³ o'Lantern pumpkin⁴. Wasn't that just awful! Well, I guess yes, and some tooth brushes besides.

 

"Oh, Curly, how could you?" asked the owl teacher, in a sorrowful voice.

 

"I—I didn't mean to," spoke⁵ the little piggie boy. "I—I guess it just—happened."

 

You see, during the drawing lesson, when the animal children were supposed to make different pictures on their papers, the teacher would fly around the room softly and come up from behind the desks. Thus, she could look over the animal children's shoulders and see what they were doing, when they didn't know it. It was then that she had seen what Curly, the pig, drew.

 

"Well, Curly," went on the owl teacher, sadly, "of course, it was wrong of you to make that kind of a picture, and, though I do not like to do it, I shall have to punish you. You will have to stay in after school."

 

And so that's how it was that Curly did not go out with the other animal children when school was dismissed. He had to stay in and clean off the blackboards, but he didn't mind that much, and really he was sorry for being a little bit bad.

 

"You may go now," said the owl school teacher, after a while, and Curly hurried home, feeling a little sad, and wondering what his mamma would say to him. He also wanted to hurry and have some fun with his brother, Flop.

 

Well, as Curly was going through the woods, all of a sudden, under a tree, something fell and hit him on the nose. He jumped to one side and exclaimed:

 

"Who is throwing stones at me?"

 

But no one answered, and Curly went on. Soon something else fell down, and hit him on the ear.

 

"I say!" he cried. "Would you please stop that? Is that the skillery-scalery alligator⁷, or the fuzzy fox?"

 

But no one answered him, and Curly hurried on, thinking that perhaps bad fairies might be trying to have fun with him, or maybe turn him into a ham, or a piece of bacon, or something like that.

 

Well, he had not gone on much farther when, all at once, another something pattered down from a high tree, and struck him on the nose again.

 

"Oh, I say!" cried Curly, "please stop!" for this time it had been something sharp that hit him. "That isn't fair!" went on the little piggie boy. "Who is throwing things at me?"

 

He looked down on the ground, and there he saw something like a rubber ball, only it was a sort of greenish brown color, and had stickers all over on it. And then it burst open, and out rolled three little brown things.

 

"My word!" cried Curly, just like an English piggie boy. "My word!

What is this?"

"Ha! Ha!" laughed a voice behind him, and turning quickly around Curly saw Jacko Kinkytail, a hand organ monkey, hanging by his tail from a tree branch. "Ha! Ha!" laughed the monkey again. "Don't you know what those brown things on the ground are?"

 

"No indeed," replied the piggie boy. "What are they?"

 

"Chestnuts⁸," said Jacko the hand organ monkey. "They are chestnuts, and they fell off the trees and hit you. No one was throwing stones at you, though the prickly burrs inside of which the chestnuts are, seem as large as stones."

 

"Chestnuts, eh?" spoke Curly. "What good are they?"

 

"To eat," answered the monkey. "We will build a fire and roast some, and you will like them very much."

 

"Goodie-oodie!" squealed⁹ Curly, and, as he and the monkey began to gather up the chestnuts, the piggie boy was rather glad, after all, that he had been kept in, though of course he was sorry that he had made the wrong picture in drawing class.

 

So while Curly gathered up the chestnuts, rooting them out from under the leaves with his nose, that was like a piece of rubber, and stamping them out of the prickly burrs with his sharp feet—while he was doing this, I say, the monkey was making a fire to roast the nuts.

 

Soon Curly had quite a pile of them by an old stump¹⁰, and the monkey had built a hot fire.

 

"Now, we will roast the chestnuts," spoke Jacko, and he put several pawsful on the hot coals.

 

"And when will they be roasted?" asked Curly.

 

"Soon," answered the monkey. "We will have a game of tag while we are waiting."

 

And, all of a sudden, as they were playing tag, out from under a big flat stone, came the bad skillery-scalery alligator, with a tin horn on his back. Oh! but he was a bad fellow!

 

"Ah, ha!" he cried. "Now I have you! Now I will have a piggie boy to eat and a monkey boy to wait on the table. Come along, both of you!" and the bad alligator made a grab for the two friends and was about to carry them off to his den⁶.

 

"Oh, please let me go!" begged Curly.

 

"Yes do!" asked the monkey. "Let us go."

 

"No! No!" snapped the alligator. And just then there sounded this noise:

 

"Bang! Bang! Snap! Crack! Bang! Boom!"

 

"Oh I what is that?" cried the 'gator. "Oh! the hunters with their guns are after me. I must run! This is no place for me!"

 

Then, dropping Curly and the monkey, the bad alligator ran away as fast as he could, and didn't hurt either of them, and the "bang-bang!" noises kept getting louder and louder.

 

"Oh, what are they?" asked Curly, who was almost as much frightened as the alligator had been at the strange sounds.

 

"Nothing but the roasting chestnuts," answered Jacko the monkey. "They are bursting and making noises like guns because the fire is so hot, and because I forgot to make holes in the nuts to let the steam out. But it is a good thing I did, for they burst and scared the alligator."

 

"Indeed, they did," agreed Curly.

 

"And we'll roast some more chestnuts in place of the burst ones," said the monkey, and he did, and Curly had as many as he wanted, and some to take home. Soon he arrived at the piggie-house, and every one was glad to see him and the chestnuts, and that's all to this story.

 

But in case the pretty Red Cross nurse with the blue eyes and the jolly laugh says that it's all right for the trolley¹¹ car to jump over the house and play tag with the chimney, I'll tell you next about Baby Pinky and the doctor.

1 owl   

n.猫头鹰，枭

参考例句：

• Her new glasses make her look like an owl.她的新眼镜让她看上去像只猫头鹰。
• I'm a night owl and seldom go to bed until after midnight.我睡得很晚，经常半夜后才睡觉。

2 flop   

n.失败(者)，扑通一声；vi.笨重地行动，沉重地落下

参考例句：

• The fish gave a flop and landed back in the water.鱼扑通一声又跳回水里。
• The marketing campaign was a flop.The product didn't sell.市场宣传彻底失败，产品卖不出去。

3 jack   

n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克

参考例句：

• I am looking for the headphone jack.我正在找寻头戴式耳机插孔。
• He lifted the car with a jack to change the flat tyre.他用千斤顶把车顶起来换下瘪轮胎。

4 pumpkin   

n.南瓜

参考例句：

• They ate turkey and pumpkin pie.他们吃了火鸡和南瓜馅饼。
• It looks like there is a person looking out of the pumpkin!看起来就像南瓜里有人在看着你！

5 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

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

6 den   

n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室

参考例句：

• There is a big fox den on the back hill.后山有一个很大的狐狸窝。
• The only way to catch tiger cubs is to go into tiger's den.不入虎穴焉得虎子。

7 alligator   

n.短吻鳄(一种鳄鱼)

参考例句：

• She wandered off to play with her toy alligator.她开始玩鳄鱼玩具。
• Alligator skin is five times more costlier than leather.鳄鱼皮比通常的皮革要贵5倍。

8 chestnuts   

n.栗子( chestnut的名词复数 )；栗色；栗树；栗色马

参考例句：

• A man in the street was selling bags of hot chestnuts. 街上有个男人在卖一包包热栗子。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Talk of chestnuts loosened the tongue of this inarticulate young man. 因为栗子，正苦无话可说的年青人，得到同情他的人了。 来自汉英文学 - 中国现代小说

9 squealed   

v.长声尖叫，用长而尖锐的声音说( squeal的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He squealed the words out. 他吼叫着说出那些话。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The brakes of the car squealed. 汽车的刹车发出吱吱声。 来自《简明英汉词典》

10 stump   

n.残株，烟蒂，讲演台；v.砍断，蹒跚而走

参考例句：

• He went on the stump in his home state.他到故乡所在的州去发表演说。
• He used the stump as a table.他把树桩用作桌子。

11 trolley   

n.手推车，台车；无轨电车；有轨电车

参考例句：

• The waiter had brought the sweet trolley.侍者已经推来了甜食推车。
• In a library,books are moved on a trolley.在图书馆，书籍是放在台车上搬动的。