Arthur Charles Prohack came downstairs at eight thirty, as usual, and found breakfast ready in the empty dining-room. This pleased him, because there was nothing in life he hated more than to be hurried. For him, hell was a place of which the inhabitants always had an eye on the clock and the clock was always further advanced than they had hoped.
The dining-room, simply furnished with reproductions of chaste1 Chippendale, and chilled to the uncomfortable low temperature that hardy2 Britons pretend to enjoy, formed part of an unassailably correct house of mid-Victorian style and antiquity3; and the house formed part of an unassailably correct square just behind Hyde Park Gardens. (Taxi-drivers, when told the name of the square, had to reflect for a fifth of a second before they could recall its exact situation.)
Mr. Prohack was a fairly tall man, with a big head, big features, and a beard. His characteristic expression denoted benevolence4 based on an ironic5 realisation of the humanity of human nature. He was forty-six years of age and looked it. He had been for more than twenty years at the Treasury6, in which organism he had now attained7 a certain importance. He was a Companion of the Bath. He exulted8 in the fact that the Order of the Bath took precedence of those bumptious9 Orders, Star of India, St. Michael and St. George, Indian Empire, Royal Victorian and British Empire; but he laughed at his wife for so exulting10. If the matter happened to be mentioned he would point out that in the table of precedence Companions of the Bath ranked immediately below Masters in Lunacy.
He was proud of the Treasury's war record. Other departments of State had swollen11 to amazing dimensions during the war. The Treasury, while its work had been multiplied a hundredfold, had increased its personnel by only a negligible percentage. It was the cheapest of all the departments, the most efficient, and the most powerful. The War Office, the Admiralty, and perhaps one other department presided over by a personality whom the Prime Minister feared, did certainly defy and even ignore the Treasury. But the remaining departments (and especially the "mushroom ministries") might scheme as much as they liked,—they could do nothing until the Treasury had approved their enterprises. Modest Mr. Prohack was among the chief arbiters12 of destiny for them. He had daily sat in a chair by himself and approved or disapproved13 according to his conscience and the rules of the Exchequer14; and his fiats15, in practice, had gone forth16 as the fiats of the Treasury. Moreover he could not be bullied17, for he was full of the sense that the whole constitution and moral force of the British Empire stood waiting to back him. Scarcely known beyond the Treasury, within the Treasury he had acquired a reputation as "the terror of the departments." Several times irritated Ministers or their high subordinates had protested that the Treasury's (Mr. Prohack's) passion for rules, its demands for scientific evidence, and its sceptical disposition18 were losing the war. Mr. Prohack had, in effect retorted: "Departmentally considered, losing the war is a detail." He had retorted: "Wild cats will not win the war." And he had retorted: "I know nothing but my duty."
In the end the war was not lost, and Mr. Prohack reckoned that he personally, by the exercise of courage in the face of grave danger, had saved to the country five hundred and forty-six millions of the country's money. At any rate he had exercised a real influence over the conduct of the war. On one occasion, a chief being absent, he had had to answer a summons to the Inner Cabinet. Of this occasion he had remarked to his excited wife: "They were far more nervous than I was."
Despite all this, the great public had never heard of him. His portrait had never appeared in the illustrated19 papers. His wife's portrait, as "War-worker and wife of a great official," had never appeared in the illustrated papers. No character sketch20 of him had ever been printed. His opinions on any subject had never been telephonically or otherwise demanded by the editors of up-to-date dailies. His news-value indeed was absolutely nil21. In Who's Who he had only four lines of space.
Mr. Prohack's breakfast consisted of bacon, dry toast, coffee, marmalade, The Times and The Daily Picture. The latter was full of brides and bridegrooms, football, enigmatic murder trials, young women in their fluffy22 underclothes, medicines, pugilists, cinema stars, the biggest pumpkin23 of the season, uplift, and inspired prophecy concerning horses and company shares; together with a few brief unillustrated notes about civil war in Ireland, famine in Central Europe, and the collapse24 of realms.
II
"Ah! So I've caught you!" said his wife, coming brightly into the room. She was a buxom25 woman of forty-three. Her black hair was elaborately done for the day, but she wore a roomy peignoir instead of a frock; it was Chinese, in the Imperial yellow, inconceivably embroidered26 with flora27, fauna28, and grotesques29. She always thus visited her husband at breakfast, picking bits off his plate like a bird, and proving to him that her chief preoccupation was ever his well-being30 and the satisfaction of his capricious tastes.
"Many years ago," said Mr. Prohack.
"You make a fuss about buying The Daily Picture for me. You say it humiliates31 you to see it in the house, and I don't know what. But I catch you reading it yourself, and before you've opened The Times! Dear, dear! That bacon's a cinder32 and I daren't say anything to her."
"Lady," replied Mr. Prohack, "we all have something base in our natures. Sin springs from opportunity. I cannot resist the damned paper." And he stuck his fork into the fair frock-coat of a fatuous33 bridegroom coming out of church.
"My fault again!" the wife remarked brightly.
The husband changed the subject:
"I suppose that your son and daughter are still asleep?"
"Well, dearest, you know that they were both at that dance last night."
"They ought not to have been. The popular idea that life is a shimmy is a dangerous illusion." Mr. Prohack felt the epigram to be third-rate, but he carried it off lightly.
"Sissie only went because Charlie wanted to go, and all I can say is that it's a nice thing if Charlie isn't to be allowed to enjoy himself now the war's over—after all he's been through."
"You're mixing up two quite different things. I bet that if Charlie committed murder you'd go into the witness-box and tell the judge he'd been wounded twice and won the Military Cross."
"This is one of your pernickety mornings."
"Seeing that your debauched children woke me up at three fifteen—!"
"They woke me up too."
"That's different. You can go to sleep again. I can't. You rather like being wakened up, because you take a positively34 sensual pleasure in turning over and going to sleep again."
"You hate me for that."
"I do."
"I make you very unhappy sometimes, don't I?"
"Eve, you are a confounded liar35, and you know it. You have never caused me a moment's unhappiness. You may annoy me. You may exasperate36 me. You are frequently unspeakable. But you have never made me unhappy. And why? Because I am one of the few exponents37 of romantic passion left in this city. My passion for you transcends38 my reason. I am a fool, but I am a magnificent fool. And the greatest miracle of modern times is that after twenty-four years of marriage you should be able to give me pleasure by perching your stout39 body on the arm of my chair as you are doing."
"Arthur, I'm not stout."
Mrs. Prohack, smiling mysteriously, remarked in a casual tone, as she looked at The Daily Picture:
"It is. But we're all vulgar to-day. Look at that!" He pointed42 to the page. "The granddaughter of a duke who refused the hand of a princess sells her name and her face to a firm of ship-owners who keep newspapers like their grandfathers kept pigeons.... But perhaps I'm only making a noise like a man of fifty."
"You aren't fifty."
"I'm five hundred. And this coffee is remarkably43 thin."
"Let me taste it."
"Yes, you'd rob me of my coffee now!" said Mr. Prohack, surrendering his cup. "Is it thin, or isn't it? I pride myself on living the higher life; my stomach is not my inexorable deity44; but even on the mountain top which I inhabit there must be a limit to the thinness of the coffee."
Eve (as he called her, after the mother and prototype of all women—her earthly name was Marian) sipped45 the coffee. She wrinkled her forehead and then glanced at him in trouble.
"Yes, it's thin," she said. "But I've had to ration46 the cook. Oh, Arthur, I am going to make you unhappy after all. It's impossible for me to manage any longer on the housekeeping allowance."
"Why didn't you tell me before, child?"
"I have told you 'before,'" said she. "If you hadn't happened to mention the coffee, I mightn't have said anything for another fortnight. You started to give me more money in June, and you said that was the utmost limit you could go to, and I believed it was. But it isn't enough. I hate to bother you, and I feel ashamed—"
"That's ridiculous. Why should you feel ashamed?"
"Well, I'm like that."
"You're revelling47 in your own virtuousness48, my girl. Now in last week's Economist49 it said that the Index Number of commodity prices had slightly fallen these last few weeks."
"I don't know anything about indexes and the Economist," Eve retorted. "But I know what coffee is a pound, and I know what the tradesmen's books are—"
At this point she cried without warning.
"No," murmured Mr. Prohack, soothingly50, caressingly51. "You mustn't baptise me. I couldn't bear it." And he kissed her eyes.
III
"I know we can't afford any more for housekeeping," she whispered, sniffing52 damply. "And I'm ashamed I can't manage, and I knew I should make you unhappy. What with idle and greedy working-men, and all these profiteers...! It's a shame!"
"Yes," said Mr. Prohack. "It's what our Charlie fought for, and got wounded twice for, and won the M.C. for. That's what it is. But you see we're the famous salaried middle-class that you read so much about in the papers, and we're going through the famous process of being crushed between the famous upper and nether53 millstones. Those millstones have been approaching each other—and us—for some time. Now they've begun to nip. That funny feeling in your inside that's causing you still to baptise me, in spite of my protest—that's the first real nip."
She caught her breath.
"Arthur," she said. "If you go on like that I shall scream."
"Do," Mr. Prohack encouraged her. "But of course not too loud. At the same time don't forget that I'm a humourist. Humourists make jokes when they're happy, and when they're unhappy they make jokes."
"But it's horribly serious."
"Horribly."
Mrs. Prohack slipped off the arm of the chair. Her body seemed to vibrate within the Chinese gown, and she effervesced54 into an ascending55 and descending56 series of sustained laughs.
"That's hysteria," said Mr. Prohack. "And if you don't stop I shall be reluctantly compelled to throw the coffee over you. Water would be better, but there is none."
Then Eve ceased suddenly.
"To think," she remarked with calmness, "that you're called the Terror of the Departments, and you're a great authority on finance, and you've been in the Government service for nearly twenty-five years, and always done your duty—"
"Child," Mr. Prohack interrupted her. "Don't tell me what I know. And try not to be surprised at any earthly phenomena57. There are people who are always being astonished by the most familiar things. They live on earth as if they'd just dropped from Mars on to a poor foreign planet. It's not a sign of commonsense58. You've lived on earth now for—shall we say?—some twenty-nine or thirty years, and if you don't know the place you ought to. I assure you that there is nothing at all unusual in our case. We are perfectly59 innocent; we are even praiseworthy; and yet—we shall have to suffer. It's quite a common case. You've read of thousands and millions of such cases; you've heard of lots personally; and you've actually met a few. Well, now, you yourself are a case. That's all."
Mrs. Prohack said impatiently:
"I consider the Government's treated you shamefully60. Why, we're much worse off than we were before the war."
"The Government has treated me shamefully. But then it's treated hundreds of thousands of men shamefully. All Governments do."
"But we have a position to keep up!"
"True. That's where the honest poor have the advantage of us. You see, we're the dishonest poor. We've been to the same schools and universities and we talk the same idiom and we have the same manners and like the same things as people who spend more in a month or a week than we spend in a year. And we pretend, and they pretend, that they and we are exactly the same. We aren't, you know. We're one vast pretence61. Has it occurred to you, lady, that we've never possessed62 a motor-car and most certainly never shall possess one? Yet look at the hundreds of thousands of cars in London alone! And not a single one of them ours! This detail may have escaped you."
"I wish you wouldn't be silly, Arthur."
"I am not silly. On the contrary, my real opinion is that I'm the wisest man you ever met in your life—not excepting your son. It remains63 that we're a pretence. A pretence resembles a bladder. It may burst. We probably shall burst. Still, we have one great advantage over the honest poor, who sometimes have no income at all; and also over the rich, who never can tell how big their incomes are going to be. We know exactly where we are. We know to the nearest sixpence."
"I don't see that that helps us. I consider the Government has treated you shamefully. I wonder you important men in the Treasury haven't formed a Trade union before now."
"Oh, Eve! After all you've said about Trade unions this last year! You shock me! We shall never he properly treated until we do form a Trade union. But we shall never form a Trade union, because we're too proud. And we'd sooner see our children starve than yield in our pride. That's a fact."
"There's one thing—we can't move into a cheaper house."
Years earlier Mr. Prohack had bought the long lease of his house from the old man who, according to the logical London system, had built the house upon somebody else's land on the condition that he paid rent for the land and in addition gave the house to the somebody else at the end of a certain period as a free gift. By a payment of twelve pounds per annum Mr. Prohack was safe for forty years yet and he calculated that in forty years the ownership of the house would be a matter of some indifference65 both to him and to his wife.
"I might borrow money on my insurance policy—and speculate," said Mr. Prohack gravely.
"Oh! Arthur! Do you really think you—" Marian showed a wild gleam of hope.
"Or I might throw the money into the Serpentine," Mr. Prohack added.
"Oh! Arthur! I could kill you. I never know how to take you."
"No, you never do. That's the worst of a woman like you marrying a man like me."
They discussed devices. One servant fewer. No holiday. Cinemas instead of theatres. No books. No cigarettes. No taxis. No clothes. No meat. No telephone. No friends. They reached no conclusion. Eve referred to Adam's great Treasury mind. Adam said that his great Treasury mind should function on the problem during the day, and further that the problem must be solved that very night.
"I'll tell you one thing I shall do," said Mrs. Prohack in a decided68 tone as Mr. Prohack left the table. "I shall countermand69 Sissie'a new frock."
"If you do I shall divorce you," was the reply.
"But why?"
Mr. Prohack answered:
"In 1917 I saw that girl in dirty overalls70 driving a thundering great van down Whitehall. Yesterday I met her in her foolish high heels and her shocking openwork stockings and her negligible dress and her exposed throat and her fur stole, and she was so delicious and so absurd and so futile71 and so sure of her power that—that—well, you aren't going to countermand any new frock. That chit has the right to ruin me—not because of anything she's done, but because she is. I am ready to commit peccadilloes72, but not crimes. Good morning, my dove."
And at the door, discreetly73 hiding her Chinese raiment behind the door, Eve said, as if she had only just thought of it, though she had been thinking of it for quite a quarter of an hour:
"Darling, there's your clubs."
"What about my clubs?"
"Don't they cost you a lot of money?"
"No. Besides I lunch at my clubs—better and cheaper than at any restaurant. And I shouldn't have time to come home for lunch."
"But do you need two clubs?"
"I've always belonged to two clubs. Every one does."
"But why two?"
"A fellow must have a club up his sleeve."
"Couldn't you give up one?"
"Lady, it's unthinkable. You don't know what you're suggesting. Abandon one of my clubs that my father put me up for when I was a boy! I'd as soon join a Trade union. No! My innocent but gluttonous74 children shall starve first."
"I shall give up my club!"
"Ah! But that's different."
"How is it different?" "You scarcely ever speak to a soul in your club. The food's bad in your club. They drink liqueurs before dinner at your club. I've seen 'em. Your club's full every night of the most formidable spinsters each eating at a table alone. Give up your club by all means. Set fire to it and burn it down. But don't count the act as a renunciation. You hate your club. Good morning, my dove."
IV
One advantage of the situation of Mr. Prohack's house was that his path therefrom to the Treasury lay almost entirely75 through verdant76 parks—Hyde Park, the Green Park, St. James's Park. Not infrequently he referred to the advantage in terms of bland77 satisfaction. True, in wet weather the advantage became a disadvantage.
During his walk through verdant parks that morning, the Terror of the Departments who habitually78 thought in millions was very gloomy. Something resembling death was in his heart. Humiliation79 also was certainly in his heart, for he felt that, no matter whose the fault, he was failing in the first duty of a man. He raged against the Chancellor80 of the Exchequer. He sliced off the head of the Chancellor of the Exchequer with his stick. (But it was only an innocent autumn wildflower, perilously81 blooming.) And the tang in the air foretold82 the approach of winter and the grip of winter—the hell of the poor.
Near Whitehall he saw the advertisement of a firm of shop-specialists:
点击收听单词发音
1 chaste | |
adj.贞洁的;有道德的;善良的;简朴的 | |
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2 hardy | |
adj.勇敢的,果断的,吃苦的;耐寒的 | |
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3 antiquity | |
n.古老;高龄;古物,古迹 | |
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4 benevolence | |
n.慈悲,捐助 | |
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5 ironic | |
adj.讽刺的,有讽刺意味的,出乎意料的 | |
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6 treasury | |
n.宝库;国库,金库;文库 | |
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7 attained | |
(通常经过努力)实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 ); 达到; 获得; 达到(某年龄、水平、状况) | |
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8 exulted | |
狂喜,欢跃( exult的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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9 bumptious | |
adj.傲慢的 | |
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10 exulting | |
vi. 欢欣鼓舞,狂喜 | |
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11 swollen | |
adj.肿大的,水涨的;v.使变大,肿胀 | |
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12 arbiters | |
仲裁人,裁决者( arbiter的名词复数 ) | |
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13 disapproved | |
v.不赞成( disapprove的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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14 exchequer | |
n.财政部;国库 | |
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15 fiats | |
n.命令,许可( fiat的名词复数 );菲亚特汽车(意大利品牌) | |
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16 forth | |
adv.向前;向外,往外 | |
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17 bullied | |
adj.被欺负了v.恐吓,威逼( bully的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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18 disposition | |
n.性情,性格;意向,倾向;排列,部署 | |
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19 illustrated | |
adj. 有插图的,列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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20 sketch | |
n.草图;梗概;素描;v.素描;概述 | |
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21 nil | |
n.无,全无,零 | |
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22 fluffy | |
adj.有绒毛的,空洞的 | |
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23 pumpkin | |
n.南瓜 | |
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24 collapse | |
vi.累倒;昏倒;倒塌;塌陷 | |
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25 buxom | |
adj.(妇女)丰满的,有健康美的 | |
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26 embroidered | |
adj.绣花的 | |
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27 flora | |
n.(某一地区的)植物群 | |
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28 fauna | |
n.(一个地区或时代的)所有动物,动物区系 | |
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29 grotesques | |
n.衣着、打扮、五官等古怪,不协调的样子( grotesque的名词复数 ) | |
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30 well-being | |
n.安康,安乐,幸福 | |
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31 humiliates | |
使蒙羞,羞辱,使丢脸( humiliate的第三人称单数 ) | |
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32 cinder | |
n.余烬,矿渣 | |
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33 fatuous | |
adj.愚昧的;昏庸的 | |
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34 positively | |
adv.明确地,断然,坚决地;实在,确实 | |
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35 liar | |
n.说谎的人 | |
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36 exasperate | |
v.激怒,使(疾病)加剧,使恶化 | |
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37 exponents | |
n.倡导者( exponent的名词复数 );说明者;指数;能手 | |
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38 transcends | |
超出或超越(经验、信念、描写能力等)的范围( transcend的第三人称单数 ); 优于或胜过… | |
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40 morbid | |
adj.病的;致病的;病态的;可怕的 | |
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41 awfully | |
adv.可怕地,非常地,极端地 | |
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42 pointed | |
adj.尖的,直截了当的 | |
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43 remarkably | |
ad.不同寻常地,相当地 | |
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44 deity | |
n.神,神性;被奉若神明的人(或物) | |
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45 sipped | |
v.小口喝,呷,抿( sip的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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46 ration | |
n.定量(pl.)给养,口粮;vt.定量供应 | |
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47 revelling | |
v.作乐( revel的现在分词 );狂欢;着迷;陶醉 | |
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48 virtuousness | |
贞德,高洁 | |
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49 economist | |
n.经济学家,经济专家,节俭的人 | |
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50 soothingly | |
adv.抚慰地,安慰地;镇痛地 | |
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51 caressingly | |
爱抚地,亲切地 | |
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52 sniffing | |
n.探查法v.以鼻吸气,嗅,闻( sniff的现在分词 );抽鼻子(尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气);抱怨,不以为然地说 | |
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53 nether | |
adj.下部的,下面的;n.阴间;下层社会 | |
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54 effervesced | |
v.冒气泡,起泡沫( effervesce的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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55 ascending | |
adj.上升的,向上的 | |
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56 descending | |
n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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57 phenomena | |
n.现象 | |
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58 commonsense | |
adj.有常识的;明白事理的;注重实际的 | |
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59 perfectly | |
adv.完美地,无可非议地,彻底地 | |
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60 shamefully | |
可耻地; 丢脸地; 不体面地; 羞耻地 | |
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61 pretence | |
n.假装,作假;借口,口实;虚伪;虚饰 | |
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62 possessed | |
adj.疯狂的;拥有的,占有的 | |
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63 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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64 concurred | |
同意(concur的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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65 indifference | |
n.不感兴趣,不关心,冷淡,不在乎 | |
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66 desperately | |
adv.极度渴望地,绝望地,孤注一掷地 | |
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67 kindly | |
adj.和蔼的,温和的,爽快的;adv.温和地,亲切地 | |
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68 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
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69 countermand | |
v.撤回(命令),取消(订货) | |
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70 overalls | |
n.(复)工装裤;长罩衣 | |
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71 futile | |
adj.无效的,无用的,无希望的 | |
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72 peccadilloes | |
n.轻罪,小过失( peccadillo的名词复数 ) | |
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73 discreetly | |
ad.(言行)审慎地,慎重地 | |
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74 gluttonous | |
adj.贪吃的,贪婪的 | |
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75 entirely | |
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地 | |
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76 verdant | |
adj.翠绿的,青翠的,生疏的,不老练的 | |
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77 bland | |
adj.淡而无味的,温和的,无刺激性的 | |
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78 habitually | |
ad.习惯地,通常地 | |
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79 humiliation | |
n.羞辱 | |
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80 chancellor | |
n.(英)大臣;法官;(德、奥)总理;大学校长 | |
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81 perilously | |
adv.充满危险地,危机四伏地 | |
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82 foretold | |
v.预言,预示( foretell的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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