We started to walk to town today, but mercy! how it poured.
I like winter to be winter with snow instead of rain.
Julia's desirable uncle called again this afternoon--and brought
a five-pound box of chocolates. There are advantages, you see,
about rooming with Julia.
Our innocent prattle1 appeared to amuse him and he waited for a later
train in order to take tea in the study. We had an awful lot of
trouble getting permission. It's hard enough entertaining fathers
and grandfathers, but uncles are a step worse; and as for brothers
and cousins, they are next to impossible. Julia had to swear
that he was her uncle before a notary2 public and then have the
county clerk's certificate attached. (Don't I know a lot of law?)
And even then I doubt if we could have had our tea if the Dean
had chanced to see how youngish and good-looking Uncle Jervis is.
Anyway, we had it, with brown bread Swiss cheese sandwiches.
He helped make them and then ate four. I told him that I had
spent last summer at Lock Willow3, and we had a beautiful gossipy
time about the Semples, and the horses and cows and chickens.
All the horses that he used to know are dead, except Grover,
who was a baby colt at the time of his last visit--and poor Grove4
now is so old he can just limp about the pasture.
He asked if they still kept doughnuts in a yellow crock with a blue
plate over it on the bottom shelf of the pantry--and they do!
He wanted to know if there was still a woodchuck's hole under the pile
of rocks in the night pasture--and there is! Amasai caught a big,
fat, grey one there this summer, the twenty-fifth great-grandson
of the one Master Jervis caught when he was a little boy.
I called him `Master Jervie' to his face, but he didn't appear
to be insulted. Julia says she has never seen him so amiable5;
he's usually pretty unapproachable. But Julia hasn't a bit of tact6;
and men, I find, require a great deal. They purr if you rub them the
right way and spit if you don't. (That isn't a very elegant metaphor7.
I mean it figuratively.)
We're reading Marie Bashkirtseff's journal. Isn't it amazing?
Listen to this: `Last night I was seized by a fit of despair
that found utterance8 in moans, and that finally drove me to throw
the dining-room clock into the sea.'
It makes me almost hope I'm not a genius; they must be very wearing
to have about--and awfully9 destructive to the furniture.
Mercy! how it keeps Pouring. We shall have to swim to chapel10 tonight.
Yours ever,
Judy
点击收听单词发音
1 prattle | |
n.闲谈;v.(小孩般)天真无邪地说话;发出连续而无意义的声音 | |
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2 notary | |
n.公证人,公证员 | |
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3 willow | |
n.柳树 | |
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4 grove | |
n.林子,小树林,园林 | |
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5 amiable | |
adj.和蔼可亲的,友善的,亲切的 | |
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6 tact | |
n.机敏,圆滑,得体 | |
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7 metaphor | |
n.隐喻,暗喻 | |
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8 utterance | |
n.用言语表达,话语,言语 | |
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9 awfully | |
adv.可怕地,非常地,极端地 | |
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10 chapel | |
n.小教堂,殡仪馆 | |
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