“That’s the boat, all right,” Gar announced, as he shoved alongside. “And just look at the—timber!”
The timber consisted of small trees, newly cut into pole lengths and placed into the launch, evidently ready to be carried off.
“That’s queer,” remarked Dell. “What can she want those for?”
“Not for wood,” Nancy replied. “That201 would stay green all winter. But let’s hurry and hunt. Shall we call now?”
“Here’s their path,” replied Gar, instead of answering. “See how fresh the broken weeds are. Let’s follow this a—ways.”
Nancy’s heart was fairly jumping with excitement. She did not want to guess at how they might find Rosa; whether she would be lying sick in that dark, damp woods, or—
“Hello there!” came a sharp call. “Meet Miss Robinson Crusoe—”
“Rosa!” exclaimed Nancy. “Oh, Rosa!” She couldn’t seem to say anything else just then, the sight of Rosa was such a relief.
“Rosalind Fernell!” was Dell’s emphatic3 greeting.
“Runaway Rosie,” chuckled4 Gar, his stout5 stick beating viciously at the greenery that choked the little pathway.
By this time Rosa was in full view, and the searchers beheld6 her lugging7 great bundles of young saplings, her arms scratched and torn from her efforts to carry more of the poles than she could properly manage.
202 “Why the woodyard?” asked Gar, laconically9.
“They’re for Orilla—”
“Any objections?” demanded the girl just spoken of. She also was now visible, having come through a mass of clotted11 hazel nut trees, and she too looked like a picture from some foreign land, where women do all the chores.
“Yes, we have objections, Orilla Rigney,” spoke10 up Dell, sharply, “and you ought to know well enough what they are.”
“Let’s help them load their boat,” interposed Nancy, fearful that the unpleasant discussion would develop into something more serious. “Here, Rosa, I’ll take some of those—”
“Do—please,” murmured Rosa, her voice now betraying what Nancy feared—exhaustion. “I’m almost dead,” she whispered, as the defiant12 Orilla made her way down to the boat. “I was never so frightened in—my life!”
“Neither was I,” returned Nancy. “I’m shaking yet. What ever got into her—”
203 “Hush! She’s excited and ugly—”
“What ever—”
“Let me lug8 those logs if you must have them,” called out Gar, in his roughly frank, boyish way. “Goin’ to start a new cure, Orilla? Is this tree bark good for snake bites or something?”
“What I’m going to start is my own business,” snapped back Orilla, throwing her vivid head up high and bracing13 her thin body to carry the heavy load of wood. She was wearing a khaki suit, like a uniform, but even this, strong as the material must have been, showed more than one jagged tear from violent contact with the young trees, which must have struggled bravely against her cruel little ax.
“Have it your own way,” drawled Gar, good-naturedly. “Here, Nancy and Rosa, let’s help you. Maybe you’re not quite so fussy15.”
Willingly enough Nancy and Rosa relinquished16 the rough sticks, their hands smarting and red from trying to tote them down to the water’s edge.
204 No one said much, everyone seemed to realize that that was the only way to avoid trouble, for Orilla seemed ready to snap at every word, and the thing to do, obviously, was to get in their boats and sail away from Mushroom Islands, promptly17.
“But it’s all too silly,” grumbled18 Dell aside to her own friends. “Why should we humor that girl?”
“We are almost ready to go now,” Rosa coaxed20. “And it is so killing21 hard to chop down those trees. Just look at my poor hands!”
The poor hands represented a pitiable sight indeed, for being pudgy and fat, they were easily bruised23 and torn, so that their surface now looked like nothing other than bruises24 and scratches.
Unwillingly25 they went back once more to the little woodland, where the devastation26 had been perpetrated, and there they gathered up what remained of the felled trees.
“You must have worked hard, Rosa,” Gar commented. “Why don’t you go in the business?205 Put a sign out, ‘Woodlands Cleared While You Wait.’ I tell you, I tried once on our back woods and didn’t do anything like as well as this—”
To which Rosa did not risk a reply, for the quarrelsome Orilla was at her elbow directing the gleaning27 in no uncertain tones.
But it was not so easy to suppress Gar. He wasn’t afraid of Orilla Rigney, and he was willing to let folks know it.
“Now, that’s enough,” he decided28 sharply. “We’re not going to take another stick. If you want to chop down trees, Orilla, why don’t you hire help? Or why don’t you choose a woods nearer civilization?”
“What are you grumbling29 about?” retorted Orilla, letting drop more than one of the sticks she had just picked up. “I didn’t ask your help, and I don’t want it—”
“But there’s a storm coming, Orilla,” said Nancy very kindly30, as kindly as she might have spoken to some troublesome child, “and we had better all hurry back. There now, it’s206 all cleared up. Here, give me that long one. I haven’t an armful this time.”
So for the moment peace was restored, and the queer proceedings31 continued, until at last even Orilla seemed satisfied that the task had been properly finished.
Only to Nancy did she deign32 a pleasant look, and that look, Nancy thought, was rather secretive. For as the girl did half smile, she also winked33 one of her green, gimlet eyes, as if trying to convey to Nancy a message not meant for the others. This recalled the party cape34 episode, when Nancy compromised by agreeing, at least partly, not to mention Orilla’s secret visit.
“But we found you, Rosa, at any rate,” Nancy repeated, as again they paired off. “I’ll never be able to tell you how I felt,” she continued, giving the truant35 cousin a reassuring36 pinch.
Rosa rolled her eyes meaningly. “If you hadn’t—” She left that contingency37 to Nancy’s over-worked imagination, and again turned to help Orilla.
207 “Don’t bother; just go along,” ordered Orilla rudely.
“But aren’t you going too?” Rosa questioned in surprise.
“Seems to me folks are awfully38 worried about what I’m going to do,” snapped Orilla. “But if you’ll all go along and take your pet with you—”
“Orilla Rigney!” called out Dell authoritatively39. “What is the matter with you? Are you determined40 to make enemies of even those who are trying to help you?”
Nancy turned quickly to interpose, and as she caught a queer expression on Orilla’s face she hurried to answer Dell before the other could do so.
“Now, Dell, please don’t be cross,” begged Nancy with a sly glance intended for Dell alone. “We had all best be going if we hope to escape that storm. Just see those clouds!”
“All aboard!” called out Gar. “Orilla, can’t I push your boat out for you?”
“No, thank you. I’m not ready yet.”
“But the storm,” pleaded Nancy.
208 “I’m not afraid of storms. I love them.”
“Out here, all alone?”
“I have birds and all the wild life of the woods. They are the friends I can depend upon,” replied Orilla. And as she said this her voice was soft, pleasant, actually musical. It was plain where her affections lay.
“All right. Sorry. Hop22 in, girls. I’m heading straight for the other shore,” Gar made known, starting up the engine as he talked.
Reluctantly they turned away from the solitary41 figure on the shore. She looked like a creature of the woods, indeed, the brown outline of her form merging42 so completely into the shadows, that it was scarcely distinguishable as the watchers swung around the end of the island.
“Why won’t she come?” queried43 Nancy anxiously.
“Because she won’t let us see where she goes,” replied Rosa.
“And don’t you know?” pressed Nancy further.
209 “No. She had promised to take me this afternoon—but—oh, well—” sighed Rosa. “I’m glad you came and I don’t care much about her promises now. I guess I’ve been pretty—foolish.”
“Only guess so?” put in Dell, in a way naturally expected from her, as the oldest member of the party. “We’ve been sure of that all summer. Just imagine, cutting down trees and doing that silly stuff!”
“Now, Dell,” objected Rosa, a little huffed, “you must know I did have some reason. I’m not altogether a simpleton, I hope.”
“So do we—hope,” flung back Gar over his shoulder. “But there’s a boat I’ve got to tow in. See them waving? Hold tight; I’ve got to turn sharp and these waves are pretty frisky44.”
All hands now turned their attention to the fisherman’s boat, a little rowboat, quite helpless against the fury into which the lake was working its surface. It took but a very short time to reach the craft, then a man flung Gar a line which the boy pulled up until he could210 tie it securely into the stern lock of the Whitecap.
“Why, there’s Pixley!” shouted Rosa. “See her trying to hold on to the fish. She’s sitting in the bottom of the boat.”
And those who looked saw the little woman just as Rosa said, trying desperately45 to keep her cargo46 from being washed overboard.
As she recognized the party in the Whitecap, however, she managed to shout her delight, for it appears she and her pilot had been battling the waves for some time before the launch came along.
“Ought to call you girls life-savers,” she called out. “This is the second time you have saved mine.”
“Maybe the third,” joked Nancy to Rosa, “for if I hadn’t saved her from the mob in the train when that grape juice bottle exploded—”
But Nancy just then saw a speck47 of light, like a spark, over in one of the group of islands from which they had lately embarked48.
And it couldn’t have been lightning, for the storm, though imminent49, had not yet broken211 and there was no rumble19 of thunder even in the distance.
She looked again, made sure of the spot, but said nothing to her companions. The appeal Orilla had silently given her, with that glance from her deep-set eyes, seemed to Nancy too pathetic to be made light of. And perhaps the spark of light in the woodland, away out there where nothing but low, scrubby pine trees grew, had something to do with Orilla’s secret. At any rate this was no time to discuss it. Confusion forbade.
“We’ll be in before it hits us,” called Gar gayly, surveying the racing14 storm clouds.
“And a good thing for us,” added his sister, “for even this launch is not altogether safe in a real lake hurricane.”
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
willows
|
|
| n.柳树( willow的名词复数 )；柳木 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
foliage
|
|
| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
emphatic
|
|
| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
chuckled
|
|
| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
beheld
|
|
| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
lugging
|
|
| 超载运转能力 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
lug
|
|
| n.柄，突出部，螺帽；(英）耳朵；（俚）笨蛋；vt.拖，拉，用力拖动 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
laconically
|
|
| adv.简短地，简洁地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
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： |
|
|
|
|
11
clotted
|
|
| adj.凝结的v.凝固( clot的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
defiant
|
|
| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
bracing
|
|
| adj.令人振奋的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
racing
|
|
| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
fussy
|
|
| adj.为琐事担忧的，过分装饰的，爱挑剔的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
relinquished
|
|
| 交出，让给( relinquish的过去式和过去分词 )； 放弃 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
promptly
|
|
| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
grumbled
|
|
| 抱怨( grumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 发牢骚； 咕哝； 发哼声 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
rumble
|
|
| n.隆隆声；吵嚷；v.隆隆响；低沉地说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
coaxed
|
|
| v.哄，用好话劝说( coax的过去式和过去分词 )；巧言骗取；哄劝，劝诱 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
killing
|
|
| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
hop
|
|
| n.单脚跳，跳跃；vi.单脚跳，跳跃；着手做某事；vt.跳跃，跃过 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
bruised
|
|
| [医]青肿的，瘀紫的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
bruises
|
|
| n.瘀伤，伤痕，擦伤( bruise的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
unwillingly
|
|
| adv.不情愿地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
devastation
|
|
| n.毁坏；荒废；极度震惊或悲伤 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
gleaning
|
|
| n.拾落穗，拾遗，落穗v.一点点地收集（资料、事实）( glean的现在分词 )；（收割后）拾穗 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
decided
|
|
| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
grumbling
|
|
| adj. 喃喃鸣不平的, 出怨言的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
kindly
|
|
| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
proceedings
|
|
| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
deign
|
|
| v. 屈尊, 惠允 ( 做某事) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
winked
|
|
| v.使眼色( wink的过去式和过去分词 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
cape
|
|
| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
truant
|
|
| n.懒惰鬼，旷课者；adj.偷懒的，旷课的，游荡的；v.偷懒，旷课 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
reassuring
|
|
| a.使人消除恐惧和疑虑的，使人放心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
contingency
|
|
| n.意外事件，可能性 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
awfully
|
|
| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
authoritatively
|
|
| 命令式地，有权威地，可信地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
determined
|
|
| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
solitary
|
|
| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
merging
|
|
| 合并（分类） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
queried
|
|
| v.质疑，对…表示疑问( query的过去式和过去分词 )；询问 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
frisky
|
|
| adj.活泼的，欢闹的；n.活泼，闹着玩；adv.活泼地，闹着玩地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
desperately
|
|
| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
cargo
|
|
| n.(一只船或一架飞机运载的)货物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
speck
|
|
| n.微粒，小污点，小斑点 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
embarked
|
|
| 乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 )； 装载； 从事 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
imminent
|
|
| adj.即将发生的，临近的，逼近的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |