Chapter 8

On the Sunday after Christmas Claude and Ernest were walking along the banks of Lovely Creek¹. They had been as far as Mr. Wheeler’s timber claim and back. It was like an autumn afternoon, so warm that they left their overcoats on the limb of a crooked² elm by the pasture fence. The fields and the bare tree-tops seemed to be swimming in light. A few brown leaves still clung to the bushy trees along the creek. In the upper pasture, more than a mile from the house, the boys found a bittersweet vine that wound about a little dogwood and covered it with scarlet³ berries. It was like finding a Christmas tree growing wild out of doors. They had just been talking about some of the books Claude had brought home, and his history course. He was not able to tell Ernest as much about the lectures as he had meant to, and he felt that this was more Ernest’s fault than his own; Ernest was such a literal-minded fellow. When they came upon the bittersweet, they forgot their discussion and scrambled⁴ down the bank to admire the red clusters on the woody, smoke-coloured vine, and its pale gold leaves, ready to fall at a touch. The vine and the little tree it honoured, hidden away in the cleft⁵ of a ravine, had escaped the stripping winds, and the eyes of schoolchildren who sometimes took a short cut home through the pasture. At its roots, the creek trickled⁶ thinly along, black between two jagged crusts of melting ice.

When they left the spot and climbed back to the level, Claude again felt an itching⁷ to prod⁸ Ernest out of his mild and reasonable mood.

“What are you going to do after a while, Ernest? Do you mean to farm all your life?”

“Naturally. If I were going to learn a trade, I’d be at it before now. What makes you ask that?”

“Oh, I don’t know! I suppose people must think about the future sometime. And you’re so practical.”

“The future, eh?” Ernest shut one eye and smiled. “That’s a big word. After I get a place of my own and have a good start, I’m going home to see my old folks some winter. Maybe I’ll marry a nice girl and bring her back.”

“Is that all?”

“That’s enough, if it turns out right, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps. It wouldn’t be for me. I don’t believe I can ever settle down to anything. Don’t you feel that at this rate there isn’t much in it?”

“In what?”

“In living at all, going on as we do. What do we get out of it? Take a day like this: you waken up in the morning and you’re glad to be alive; it’s a good enough day for anything, and you feel sure something will happen. Well, whether it’s a workday or a holiday, it’s all the same in the end. At night you go to bed — nothing has happened.”

“But what do you expect? What can happen to you, except in your own mind? If I get through my work, and get an afternoon off to see my friends like this, it’s enough for me.”

“Is it? Well, if we’ve only got once to live, it seems like there ought to be something — well, something splendid about life, sometimes.”

Ernest was sympathetic now. He drew nearer to Claude as they walked along and looked at him sidewise with concern. “You Americans are always looking for something outside yourselves to warm you up, and it is no way to do. In old countries, where not very much can happen to us, we know that, — and we learn to make the most of little things.”

“The martyrs⁹ must have found something outside themselves. Otherwise they could have made themselves comfortable with little things.”

“Why, I should say they were the ones who had nothing but their idea! It would be ridiculous to get burned at the stake for the sensation. Sometimes I think the martyrs had a good deal of vanity to help them along, too.”

Claude thought Ernest had never been so tiresome¹⁰. He squinted¹¹ at a bright object across the fields and said cuttingly, “The fact is, Ernest, you think a man ought to be satisfied with his board and clothes and Sundays off, don’t you?”

Ernest laughed rather mournfully. “It doesn’t matter much what I think about it; things are as they are. Nothing is going to reach down from the sky and pick a man up, I guess.”

Claude muttered something to himself, twisting his chin about over his collar as if he had a bridle-bit in his mouth.

The sun had dropped low, and the two boys, as Mrs. Wheeler watched them from the kitchen window, seemed to be walking beside a prairie fire. She smiled as she saw their black figures moving along on the crest¹² of the hill against the golden sky; even at that distance the one looked so adaptable¹³, and the other so unyielding. They were arguing, probably, and probably Claude was on the wrong side.

1 creek   

n.小溪，小河，小湾

参考例句：

• He sprang through the creek.他跳过小河。
• People sunbathe in the nude on the rocks above the creek.人们在露出小溪的岩石上裸体晒日光浴。

2 crooked   

adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的

参考例句：

• He crooked a finger to tell us to go over to him.他弯了弯手指，示意我们到他那儿去。
• You have to drive slowly on these crooked country roads.在这些弯弯曲曲的乡间小路上你得慢慢开车。

3 scarlet   

n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的

参考例句：

• The scarlet leaves of the maples contrast well with the dark green of the pines.深红的枫叶和暗绿的松树形成了明显的对比。
• The glowing clouds are growing slowly pale,scarlet,bright red,and then light red.天空的霞光渐渐地淡下去了，深红的颜色变成了绯红，绯红又变为浅红。

4 scrambled   

v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞

参考例句：

• Each scrambled for the football at the football ground. 足球场上你争我夺。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• He scrambled awkwardly to his feet. 他笨拙地爬起身来。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 cleft   

n.裂缝；adj.裂开的

参考例句：

• I hid the message in a cleft in the rock.我把情报藏在石块的裂缝里。
• He was cleft from his brother during the war.在战争期间，他与他的哥哥分离。

6 trickled   

v.滴( trickle的过去式和过去分词 )；淌；使)慢慢走；缓慢移动

参考例句：

• Blood trickled down his face. 血从他脸上一滴滴流下来。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The tears trickled down her cheeks. 热泪一滴滴从她脸颊上滚下来。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 itching   

adj.贪得的，痒的，渴望的v.发痒( itch的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The itching was almost more than he could stand. 他痒得几乎忍不住了。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• My nose is itching. 我的鼻子发痒。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 prod   

vt.戳，刺；刺激，激励

参考例句：

• The crisis will prod them to act.那个危机将刺激他们行动。
• I shall have to prod him to pay me what he owes.我将不得不催促他把欠我的钱还给我。

9 martyrs   

n.martyr的复数形式；烈士( martyr的名词复数 )；殉道者；殉教者；乞怜者（向人诉苦以博取同情）

参考例句：

• the early Christian martyrs 早期基督教殉道者
• They paid their respects to the revolutionary martyrs. 他们向革命烈士致哀。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

10 tiresome   

adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的

参考例句：

• His doubts and hesitations were tiresome.他的疑惑和犹豫令人厌烦。
• He was tiresome in contending for the value of his own labors.他老为他自己劳动的价值而争强斗胜，令人生厌。

11 squinted   

斜视( squint的过去式和过去分词 )； 眯着眼睛； 瞟； 从小孔或缝隙里看

参考例句：

• Pulling his rifle to his shoulder he squinted along the barrel. 他把枪顶肩，眯起眼睛瞄准。
• I squinted through the keyhole. 我从锁眼窥看。

12 crest   

n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖

参考例句：

• The rooster bristled his crest.公鸡竖起了鸡冠。
• He reached the crest of the hill before dawn.他于黎明前到达山顶。

13 adaptable   

adj.能适应的，适应性强的，可改编的

参考例句：

• He is an adaptable man and will soon learn the new work.他是个适应性很强的人，很快就将学会这种工作。
• The soil is adaptable to the growth of peanuts.这土壤适宜于花生的生长。