CHAPTER XXI. DREAMERS OF DREAMS

 August went out and September came in. Harvest was ended; and though summer was not yet gone, her face was turned westering. The asters lettered her retreating footsteps in a purple script, and over the hills and valleys hung a faint blue smoke, as if Nature were worshipping at her woodland altar. The apples began to burn red on the bending boughs¹; crickets sang day and night; squirrels chattered² secrets of Polichinelle in the spruces; the sunshine was as thick and yellow as molten gold; school opened, and we small denizens³ of the hill farms lived happy days of harmless work and necessary play, closing in nights of peaceful, undisturbed slumber⁴ under a roof watched over by autumnal stars.

 

At least, our slumbers⁶ were peaceful and undisturbed until our orgy of dreaming began.

 

"I would really like to know what especial kind of deviltry you young fry are up to this time," said Uncle Roger one evening, as he passed through the orchard⁷ with his gun on his shoulder, bound for the swamp.

 

We were sitting in a circle before the Pulpit Stone, each writing diligently⁸ in an exercise book, and eating the Rev⁹. Mr. Scott's plums, which always reached their prime of juicy, golden-green flesh and bloomy blue skin in September. The Rev. Mr. Scott was dead and gone, but those plums certainly kept his memory green, as his forgotten sermons could never have done.

 

"Oh," said Felicity in a shocked tone, when Uncle Roger had passed by, "Uncle Roger SWORE."

 

"Oh, no, he didn't," said the Story Girl quickly. "'Deviltry' isn't swearing at all. It only means extra bad mischief¹⁰."

 

"Well, it's not a very nice word, anyhow," said Felicity.

 

"No, it isn't," agreed the Story Girl with a regretful sigh. "It's very expressive¹¹, but it isn't nice. That is the way with so many words. They're expressive, but they're not nice, and so a girl can't use them"

 

The Story Girl sighed again. She loved expressive words, and treasured them as some girls might have treasured jewels. To her, they were as lustrous¹² pearls, threaded on the crimson¹³ cord of a vivid fancy. When she met with a new one she uttered it over and over to herself in solitude¹⁴, weighing it, caressing¹⁵ it, infusing it with the radiance of her voice, making it her own in all its possibilities for ever.

 

"Well, anyhow, it isn't a suitable word in this case," insisted

Felicity. "We are not up to any dev—any extra bad mischief.

Writing down one's dreams isn't mischief at all."

Certainly it wasn't. Surely not even the straitest sect¹⁶ of the grown-ups could call it so. If writing down your dreams, with agonizing¹⁷ care as to composition and spelling—for who knew that the eyes of generations unborn might not read the record?—were not a harmless amusement, could anything be called so? I trow not.

 

We had been at it for a fortnight, and during that time we only lived to have dreams and write them down. The Story Girl had originated the idea one evening in the rustling¹⁸, rain-wet ways of the spruce wood, where we were picking gum after a day of showers. When we had picked enough, we sat down on the moss-grown stones at the end of a long arcade¹⁹, where it opened out on the harvest-golden valley below us, our jaws²⁰ exercising themselves vigorously on the spoil of our climbings. We were never allowed to chew gum in school or in company, but in wood and field, orchard and hayloft, such rules were in abeyance²¹.

 

"My Aunt Jane used to say it wasn't polite to chew gum anywhere," said Peter rather ruefully.

 

"I don't suppose your Aunt Jane knew all the rules of etiquette²²," said Felicity, designing to crush Peter with a big word, borrowed from the Family Guide. But Peter was not to be so crushed. He had in him a certain toughness of fibre, that would have been proof against a whole dictionary.

 

"She did, too," he retorted. "My Aunt Jane was a real lady, even if she was only a Craig. She knew all those rules and she kept them when there was nobody round to see her, just the same as when any one was. And she was smart. If father had had half her git-up-and-git I wouldn't be a hired boy to-day."

 

"Have you any idea where your father is?" asked Dan.

 

"No," said Peter indifferently. "The last we heard of him he was in the Maine lumber⁵ woods. But that was three years ago. I don't know where he is now, and," added Peter deliberately²³, taking his gum from his mouth to make his statement more impressive, "I don't care."

 

"Oh, Peter, that sounds dreadful," said Cecily. "Your own father!"

 

"Well," said Peter defiantly²⁴, "if your own father had run away when you was a baby, and left your mother to earn her living by washing and working out, I guess you wouldn't care much about him either."

 

"Perhaps your father may come home some of these days with a huge fortune," suggested the Story Girl.

 

"Perhaps pigs may whistle, but they've poor mouths for it," was all the answer Peter deigned²⁵ to this charming suggestion.

 

"There goes Mr. Campbell down the road," said Dan. "That's his new mare²⁶. Isn't she a dandy? She's got a skin like black satin. He calls her Betty Sherman."

 

"I don't think it's very nice to call a horse after your own grandmother," said Felicity.

 

"Betty Sherman would have thought it a compliment," said the

Story Girl.

"Maybe she would. She couldn't have been very nice herself, or she would never have gone and asked a man to marry her," said Felicity.

 

"Why not?"

 

"Goodness me, it was dreadful! Would YOU do such a thing yourself?"

 

"Well, I don't know," said the Story Girl, her eyes gleaming with impish laughter. "If I wanted him DREADFULLY, and HE wouldn't do the asking, perhaps I would."

 

"I'd rather die an old maid forty times over," exclaimed

Felicity.

"Nobody as pretty as you will ever be an old maid, Felicity," said Peter, who never put too fine an edge on his compliments.

 

Felicity tossed her golden tressed head and tried to look angry, but made a dismal²⁷ failure of it.

 

"It wouldn't be ladylike to ask any one to marry you, you know," argued Cecily.

 

"I don't suppose the Family Guide would think so," agreed the Story Girl lazily, with some sarcasm²⁸ in her voice. The Story Girl never held the Family Guide in such reverence²⁹ as did Felicity and Cecily. They pored over the "etiquette column" every week, and could have told you on demand, just exactly what kind of gloves should be worn at a wedding, what you should say when introducing or being introduced, and how you ought to look when your best young man came to see you.

 

"They say Mrs. Richard Cook asked HER husband to marry her," said

Dan.

"Uncle Roger says she didn't exactly ask him, but she helped the lame³⁰ dog over the stile so slick that Richard was engaged to her before he knew what had happened to him," said the Story Girl. "I know a story about Mrs. Richard Cook's grandmother. She was one of those women who are always saying 'I told you so—'"

 

"Take notice, Felicity," said Dan aside.

 

"—And she was very stubborn. Soon after she was married she and her husband quarrelled about an apple tree they had planted in their orchard. The label was lost. He said it was a Fameuse and she declared it was a Yellow Transparent³¹. They fought over it till the neighbours came out to listen. Finally he got so angry that he told her to shut up. They didn't have any Family Guide in those days, so he didn't know it wasn't polite to say shut up to your wife. I suppose she thought she would teach him manners, for would you believe it? That woman did shut up, and never spoke³² one single word to her husband for five years. And then, in five years' time, the tree bore apples, and they WERE Yellow Transparents. And then she spoke at last. She said, 'I told you so.'"

 

"And did she talk to him after that as usual?" asked Sara Ray.

 

"Oh, yes, she was just the same as she used to be," said the Story Girl wearily. "But that doesn't belong to the story. It stops when she spoke at last. You're never satisfied to leave a story where it should stop, Sara Ray."

 

"Well, I always like to know what happens afterwards," said Sara

Ray.

"Uncle Roger says he wouldn't want a wife he could never quarrel with," remarked Dan. "He says it would be too tame a life for him."

 

"I wonder if Uncle Roger will always stay a bachelor," said

Cecily.

"He seems real happy," observed Peter.

 

"Ma says that it's all right as long as he is a bachelor because he won't take any one," said Felicity, "but if he wakes up some day and finds he is an old bachelor because he can't get any one it'll have a very different flavour."

 

"If your Aunt Olivia was to up and get married what would your

Uncle Roger do for a housekeeper³³?" asked Peter.

"Oh, but Aunt Olivia will never be married now," said Felicity.

"Why, she'll be twenty-nine next January."

"Well, o' course, that's pretty old," admitted Peter, "but she might find some one who wouldn't mind that, seeing she's so pretty."

 

"It would be awful splendid and exciting to have a wedding in the family, wouldn't it?" said Cecily. "I've never seen any one married, and I'd just love to. I've been to four funerals, but not to one single wedding."

 

"I've never even got to a funeral," said Sara Ray gloomily.

 

"There's the wedding veil of the proud princess," said Cecily, pointing to a long drift of filmy vapour in the southwestern sky.

 

"And look at that sweet pink cloud below it," added Felicity.

 

"Maybe that little pink cloud is a dream, getting all ready to float down into somebody's sleep," suggested the Story Girl.

 

"I had a perfectly³⁴ awful dream last night," said Cecily, with a shudder³⁵ of remembrance. "I dreamed I was on a desert island inhabited by tigers and natives with two heads."

 

"Oh!" the Story Girl looked at Cecily half reproachfully. "Why couldn't you tell it better than that? If I had such a dream I could tell it so that everybody else would feel as if they had dreamed it, too."

 

"Well, I'm not you," countered Cecily, "and I wouldn't want to frighten any one as I was frightened. It was an awful dream—but it was kind of interesting, too."

 

"I've had some real int'resting dreams," said Peter, "but I can't remember them long. I wish I could."

 

"Why don't you write them down?" suggested the Story Girl. "Oh—" she turned upon us a face illuminated³⁶ with a sudden inspiration. "I've an idea. Let us each get an exercise book and write down all our dreams, just as we dream them. We'll see who'll have the most interesting collection. And we'll have them to read and laugh over when we're old and gray."

 

Instantly we all saw ourselves and each other by inner vision, old and gray—all but the Story Girl. We could not picture her as old. Always, as long as she lived, so it seemed to us, must she have sleek³⁷ brown curls, a voice like the sound of a harpstring in the wind, and eyes that were stars of eternal youth.

1 boughs   

大树枝( bough的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The green boughs glittered with all their pearls of dew. 绿枝上闪烁着露珠的光彩。
• A breeze sighed in the higher boughs. 微风在高高的树枝上叹息着。

2 chattered   

（人）喋喋不休( chatter的过去式 )； 唠叨； （牙齿）打战； （机器）震颤

参考例句：

• They chattered away happily for a while. 他们高兴地闲扯了一会儿。
• We chattered like two teenagers. 我们聊着天，像两个十多岁的孩子。

3 denizens   

n.居民，住户( denizen的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• polar bears, denizens of the frozen north 北极熊，在冰天雪地的北方生活的动物
• At length these denizens of the swamps disappeared in their turn. 到了后来，连这些沼泽国的居民们也不见了。 来自辞典例句

4 slumber   

n.睡眠，沉睡状态

参考例句：

• All the people in the hotels were wrapped in deep slumber.住在各旅馆里的人都已进入梦乡。
• Don't wake him from his slumber because he needs the rest.不要把他从睡眠中唤醒，因为他需要休息。

5 lumber   

n.木材，木料；v.以破旧东西堆满；伐木；笨重移动

参考例句：

• The truck was sent to carry lumber.卡车被派出去运木材。
• They slapped together a cabin out of old lumber.他们利用旧木料草草地盖起了一间小屋。

6 slumbers   

睡眠，安眠( slumber的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• His image traversed constantly her restless slumbers. 他的形象一再闯进她的脑海，弄得她不能安睡。
• My Titan brother slumbers deep inside his mountain prison. Go. 我的泰坦兄弟就被囚禁在山脉的深处。

7 orchard   

n.果园，果园里的全部果树，(美俚)棒球场

参考例句：

• My orchard is bearing well this year.今年我的果园果实累累。
• Each bamboo house was surrounded by a thriving orchard.每座竹楼周围都是茂密的果园。

8 diligently   

ad.industriously;carefully

参考例句：

• He applied himself diligently to learning French. 他孜孜不倦地学法语。
• He had studied diligently at college. 他在大学里勤奋学习。

9 rev   

v.发动机旋转，加快速度

参考例句：

• It's his job to rev up the audience before the show starts.他要负责在表演开始前鼓动观众的热情。
• Don't rev the engine so hard.别让发动机转得太快。

10 mischief   

n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹

参考例句：

• Nobody took notice of the mischief of the matter. 没有人注意到这件事情所带来的危害。
• He seems to intend mischief.看来他想捣蛋。

11 expressive   

adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的

参考例句：

• Black English can be more expressive than standard English.黑人所使用的英语可能比正式英语更有表现力。
• He had a mobile,expressive,animated face.他有一张多变的，富于表情的，生动活泼的脸。

12 lustrous   

adj.有光泽的；光辉的

参考例句：

• Mary has a head of thick,lustrous,wavy brown hair.玛丽有一头浓密、富有光泽的褐色鬈发。
• This mask definitely makes the skin fair and lustrous.这款面膜可以异常有用的使肌肤变亮和有光泽。

13 crimson   

n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色

参考例句：

• She went crimson with embarrassment.她羞得满脸通红。
• Maple leaves have turned crimson.枫叶已经红了。

14 solitude   

n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方

参考例句：

• People need a chance to reflect on spiritual matters in solitude. 人们需要独处的机会来反思精神上的事情。
• They searched for a place where they could live in solitude. 他们寻找一个可以过隐居生活的地方。

15 caressing   

爱抚的，表现爱情的，亲切的

参考例句：

• The spring wind is gentle and caressing. 春风和畅。
• He sat silent still caressing Tartar, who slobbered with exceeding affection. 他不声不响地坐在那里，不断抚摸着鞑靼，它由于获得超常的爱抚而不淌口水。

16 sect   

n.派别，宗教，学派，派系

参考例句：

• When he was sixteen he joined a religious sect.他16岁的时候加入了一个宗教教派。
• Each religious sect in the town had its own church.该城每一个宗教教派都有自己的教堂。

17 agonizing   

adj.痛苦难忍的；使人苦恼的v.使极度痛苦；折磨(agonize的ing形式)

参考例句：

• I spent days agonizing over whether to take the job or not. 我用了好些天苦苦思考是否接受这个工作。
• his father's agonizing death 他父亲极度痛苦的死

18 rustling   

n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的

参考例句：

• the sound of the trees rustling in the breeze 树木在微风中发出的沙沙声
• the soft rustling of leaves 树叶柔和的沙沙声

19 arcade   

n.拱廊；(一侧或两侧有商店的)通道

参考例句：

• At this time of the morning,the arcade was almost empty.在早晨的这个时候，拱廊街上几乎空无一人。
• In our shopping arcade,you can find different kinds of souvenir.在我们的拱廊市场，你可以发现许多的纪念品。

20 jaws   

n.口部；嘴

参考例句：

• The antelope could not escape the crocodile's gaping jaws. 那只羚羊无法从鱷鱼张开的大口中逃脱。
• The scored jaws of a vise help it bite the work. 台钳上有刻痕的虎钳牙帮助它紧咬住工件。

21 abeyance   

n.搁置，缓办，中止，产权未定

参考例句：

• The question is in abeyance until we know more about it.问题暂时搁置，直到我们了解更多有关情况再行研究。
• The law was held in abeyance for well over twenty years.这项法律被搁置了二十多年。

22 etiquette   

n.礼仪，礼节；规矩

参考例句：

• The rules of etiquette are not so strict nowadays.如今的礼仪规则已不那么严格了。
• According to etiquette,you should stand up to meet a guest.按照礼节你应该站起来接待客人。

23 deliberately   

adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地

参考例句：

• The girl gave the show away deliberately.女孩故意泄露秘密。
• They deliberately shifted off the argument.他们故意回避这个论点。

24 defiantly   

adv.挑战地，大胆对抗地

参考例句：

• Braving snow and frost, the plum trees blossomed defiantly. 红梅傲雪凌霜开。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• She tilted her chin at him defiantly. 她向他翘起下巴表示挑衅。 来自《简明英汉词典》

25 deigned   

v.屈尊，俯就( deign的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Carrie deigned no suggestion of hearing this. 嘉莉不屑一听。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹
• Carrie scarcely deigned to reply. 嘉莉不屑回答。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

26 mare   

n.母马，母驴

参考例句：

• The mare has just thrown a foal in the stable.那匹母马刚刚在马厩里产下了一只小马驹。
• The mare foundered under the heavy load and collapsed in the road.那母马因负载过重而倒在路上。

27 dismal   

adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的

参考例句：

• That is a rather dismal melody.那是一支相当忧郁的歌曲。
• My prospects of returning to a suitable job are dismal.我重新找到一个合适的工作岗位的希望很渺茫。

28 sarcasm   

n.讥讽，讽刺，嘲弄，反话 （adj.sarcastic）

参考例句：

• His sarcasm hurt her feelings.他的讽刺伤害了她的感情。
• She was given to using bitter sarcasm.她惯于用尖酸刻薄语言挖苦人。

29 reverence   

n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬

参考例句：

• He was a bishop who was held in reverence by all.他是一位被大家都尊敬的主教。
• We reverence tradition but will not be fettered by it.我们尊重传统，但不被传统所束缚。

30 lame   

adj.跛的，(辩解、论据等)无说服力的

参考例句：

• The lame man needs a stick when he walks.那跛脚男子走路时需借助拐棍。
• I don't believe his story.It'sounds a bit lame.我不信他讲的那一套。他的话听起来有些靠不住。

31 transparent   

adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的

参考例句：

• The water is so transparent that we can see the fishes swimming.水清澈透明，可以看到鱼儿游来游去。
• The window glass is transparent.窗玻璃是透明的。

32 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。

33 housekeeper   

n.管理家务的主妇，女管家

参考例句：

• A spotless stove told us that his mother is a diligent housekeeper.炉子清洁无瑕就表明他母亲是个勤劳的主妇。
• She is an economical housekeeper and feeds her family cheaply.她节约持家，一家人吃得很省。

34 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

35 shudder   

v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动

参考例句：

• The sight of the coffin sent a shudder through him.看到那副棺材，他浑身一阵战栗。
• We all shudder at the thought of the dreadful dirty place.我们一想到那可怕的肮脏地方就浑身战惊。

36 illuminated   

adj.被照明的；受启迪的

参考例句：

• Floodlights illuminated the stadium. 泛光灯照亮了体育场。
• the illuminated city at night 夜幕中万家灯火的城市

37 sleek   

adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢

参考例句：

• Women preferred sleek,shiny hair with little decoration.女士们更喜欢略加修饰的光滑闪亮型秀发。
• The horse's coat was sleek and glossy.这匹马全身润泽有光。