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CHAPTER XI THE SURPRISE THAT FELL FLAT
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It was the day that Auntie May and Tom and Beatrice were to come home, and the children were very anxious to welcome them in some special way. Welcoming always seems with children to mean doing something they like, and that the grown-up people are not likely to like, and this is exactly what happened.
 
They told Mrs. Gilmour a little about it, but not all, and asked if she did not think dressing-up was the best way of welcoming father and mother. It is extraordinary how naughty old ladies can be, far worse than children, when they give their minds to it.
 
Mrs. Gilmour suggested that they should all take off their skirts to begin with, and appear in their blue serge knickerbockers, and then she would see what could be done. Rosamond dirtied her face and put on a large tattered1 hat with no regular brim, and let one stocking fall down to show her knee, cut on purpose, and she said she was a backwoodsman out of Jules Verne. Kitty had already rather short hair, and she cut it shorter herself, till in five minutes she looked exactly like a badly barbered boy. Mrs. Gilmour let her. Did I not say she was a wicked old lady? As for Amerye, she disappeared, and I heard that she went into the housemaid's pantry and got her box of black lead and blacked herself all over with it, imitating the sweep in the Water-Babies who went to sleep in little Ellie's room. She then went and lay down in Beatrice's pretty bed. Mrs. Gilmour never missed her; she was so busy knitting me a pair of socks—one could hardly call it a pair, Rosamond said, the only thing to do was to call it a quartette. I wished to oblige and share in the nice surprise they meant to give Beatrice, so I kept them on, all except one; for I had to have a hind2 paw left free ready to scratch myself with, and took up my place on the hall mat about the time Auntie May was due. I always wait for her.
 
At last we heard the noise of wheels. Rosamond got behind the door, and Mrs. Gilmour stood with her hand on Kitty's shoulder, who looked truly hideous3, and waited, all on the broad grin.
 
When the trap drove up there was only Auntie May in it, the others had stopped at the east gate to speak to one of the foresters. So Auntie May had the surprise all to herself, and she seemed more surprised than pleased. She got out and cried out:
 
'They've sent me on to order tea. We are all frozen. How are you, Mrs. Gilmour? Who is that boy you have got with you?'
 
'It is a little boy I borrowed to keep me company while you were all away,' said Mrs. Gilmour, running her hands through Kitty's hair.
 
'What a queer-looking child! Looks as if he had water on the brain!' Auntie May said in a low voice, but Kitty heard.
 
Then Auntie May took me up in her arms and mumbled4 me, and kissed me. 'Sweetums! Didums! Who's been making a fool of you with your red socks? Poor lamb, get out of them at once. I see they worry you. Mercy, who is this?' as Rosamond bounced out at her. 'Rosamond, what an object! Have you been gardening? You are filthy5. Don't come near me until you are cleaned up, please. You seem all to have quite gone mad. But never mind, so long as we get a cup of hot tea. Here's Beatrice at last. Beatrice, I have ordered tea. I simply couldn't wait!'
 
Those idiotic6 children rushed off to the schoolroom in a body and howled. Kitty had cut off her hair so that her own aunt did not know her, and the chances were that her own mother wouldn't either, she thought. In fact, the surprise had been a horrid7 failure. I could have told her that her own mother would know her fast enough if she chose to, and would, moreover, punish her well for having cut off her own fur like that without waiting for the barber, who comes once a month to barber them all properly.
 
Sure enough, there was an awful to-do, especially when they found Amerye playing sweep in her mother's nice clean bed with pink hangings. Kitty and Amerye were sent to bed without any supper except a bit of dry bread, and Rosamond, not having done anything particular to herself—trust her not to make herself ugly!—was scolded for having allowed Kitty to cut her own hair all crooked9 across the forehead. Only Mrs. Gilmour, the grown-up lady who had helped it all on, got off without a scolding, as they always do.
 
I was scolded for one or two little things I had done while Auntie May was away, and especially for the packet of tapestry10 nails or pins, whatever you do call the horrid things that I shall never see again without a shudder11 and feeling myself all over.
 
'I tell you what, May,' said Beatrice. 'I am resigned to Loki's passing his nose over everything, reading postcards and docketing bills and superintending the post generally, but when it comes to opening my parcels for me, I do think it is too much. There were, I believe, a thousand nails in that packet he demolished12. I can't fag to count them over now, but if their number is incomplete, I should say that the balance was in your cat's stomach. He knows, probably.'
 
I did not know, they were such trifling13, two-penny-halfpenny things that one of them might easily have stuck to my tongue in turning them over. The dread14 saddened my last days at Crook8 Hall.
 
On the whole it had been a very pleasant time. They had made me quite one of the family, allowing me to share their meals, their pains, their scoldings, and their games. No one could beat me at romps15, but in the six-to-seven, when they played card games, I was a little out of it. There was the 'Kings of England' that Auntie May and Beatrice always quarrelled over, and the 'Flower Loto' in which Auntie May, not being a country person, seemed such a muff, and the 'Towns' game where Rosamond was such a dab16 because of her good memory, and the 'Pictures in the National Gallery' which was the one Kitty liked best. She was pretty quick, but she made such a hash of the pronunciation of the names of the pictures that the others laughed at her, and yet she generally won. She would say, very politely, because she knew she could not pronounce it:
 
'Will you give me please, Rosamond, the Fighting—oh dear, I can hardly pernounce it—the Fighting Temenare, by Turner?'
 
'The Fighting Temeraire, I suppose you mean, Kitty,' Rosamond would reply chillingly, not even troubling to say that she hadn't got it. 'Infant Samuel, Amerye? Look sharp!'
 
'Ain't got him, my dear child. Kitty, Infant Samuel?'
 
'Not at home, I regret to say. Rosamond, will you, if you please, give me Dignity and Imperence, by Landseer, unless it is the one I see you have just let fall into the wasperbasket.'
 
'I can give you Dignity,' said Rosamond, forking it up out of the wastepaper basket, where, sure enough, it was where Kitty said it had fallen. 'And you have got the other, haven't you, already?'
 
'They do go together,' said Kitty, not seeing that Rosamond wanted to snub her. And that's the way they went on.
 
It was lovely, and I could have stayed there for ever, only at home Auntie May's papa was growing impatient. He wrote to Auntie May continually, to ask why in the name of wonder, if Beatrice was better, Auntie May didn't come home. He said slily he thought the maids were getting into bad ways, and didn't prepare the cats' meals properly, and that Petronilla was pining, and that her two kittens had ceased to obey her, in fact were becoming unmanageable.
 
He asked who this Mr. Fox was, and seemed to think he was the reason Auntie May didn't come home. I could have told him better than that, for whenever Mr. Fox came Auntie May said, 'What a bore! I shall have to shut poor Loki up. You hate the nasty man, Loki, don't you?'
 
'One tame cat always resents another,' said Mrs. Gilmour.
 
'Ah, do they? We shall be going home for Christmas,' said Auntie May, 'and then Mr. Fox will be able to breathe freely.'
 
'He lives in London in the winter, I believe,' said Beatrice.
 
'Well, London's wide. He won't need to run up against Loki and me any more, unless he likes,' said Auntie May, and she packed up her trunks (I know of nothing more delightful17 to sit in than a trunk on crackly paper, until you are turned out) and back we went.
 
I had become quite a good traveller by this time, and had my system. That is to lie quite still, curled round, to let nobody or nothing disturb you, and not to be persuaded to look out of the basket for love or fish till the train rushes through the tunnels into King's Cross station.

点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 tattered bgSzkG     
adj.破旧的,衣衫破的
参考例句:
  • Her tattered clothes in no way detracted from her beauty.她的破衣烂衫丝毫没有影响她的美貌。
  • Their tattered clothing and broken furniture indicated their poverty.他们褴褛的衣服和破烂的家具显出他们的贫穷。
2 hind Cyoya     
adj.后面的,后部的
参考例句:
  • The animal is able to stand up on its hind limbs.这种动物能够用后肢站立。
  • Don't hind her in her studies.不要在学业上扯她后腿。
3 hideous 65KyC     
adj.丑陋的,可憎的,可怕的,恐怖的
参考例句:
  • The whole experience had been like some hideous nightmare.整个经历就像一场可怕的噩梦。
  • They're not like dogs,they're hideous brutes.它们不像狗,是丑陋的畜牲。
4 mumbled 3855fd60b1f055fa928ebec8bcf3f539     
含糊地说某事,叽咕,咕哝( mumble的过去式和过去分词 )
参考例句:
  • He mumbled something to me which I did not quite catch. 他对我叽咕了几句话,可我没太听清楚。
  • George mumbled incoherently to himself. 乔治语无伦次地喃喃自语。
5 filthy ZgOzj     
adj.卑劣的;恶劣的,肮脏的
参考例句:
  • The whole river has been fouled up with filthy waste from factories.整条河都被工厂的污秽废物污染了。
  • You really should throw out that filthy old sofa and get a new one.你真的应该扔掉那张肮脏的旧沙发,然后再去买张新的。
6 idiotic wcFzd     
adj.白痴的
参考例句:
  • It is idiotic to go shopping with no money.去买东西而不带钱是很蠢的。
  • The child's idiotic deeds caused his family much trouble.那小孩愚蠢的行为给家庭带来许多麻烦。
7 horrid arozZj     
adj.可怕的;令人惊恐的;恐怖的;极讨厌的
参考例句:
  • I'm not going to the horrid dinner party.我不打算去参加这次讨厌的宴会。
  • The medicine is horrid and she couldn't get it down.这种药很难吃,她咽不下去。
8 crook NnuyV     
v.使弯曲;n.小偷,骗子,贼;弯曲(处)
参考例句:
  • He demanded an apology from me for calling him a crook.我骂他骗子,他要我向他认错。
  • She was cradling a small parcel in the crook of her elbow.她用手臂挎着一个小包裹。
9 crooked xvazAv     
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。
10 tapestry 7qRy8     
n.挂毯,丰富多采的画面
参考例句:
  • How about this artistic tapestry and this cloisonne vase?这件艺术挂毯和这个景泰蓝花瓶怎么样?
  • The wall of my living room was hung with a tapestry.我的起居室的墙上挂着一块壁毯。
11 shudder JEqy8     
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。
12 demolished 3baad413d6d10093a39e09955dfbdfcb     
v.摧毁( demolish的过去式和过去分词 );推翻;拆毁(尤指大建筑物);吃光
参考例句:
  • The factory is due to be demolished next year. 这个工厂定于明年拆除。
  • They have been fighting a rearguard action for two years to stop their house being demolished. 两年来,为了不让拆除他们的房子,他们一直在进行最后的努力。
13 trifling SJwzX     
adj.微不足道的;没什么价值的
参考例句:
  • They quarreled over a trifling matter.他们为这种微不足道的事情争吵。
  • So far Europe has no doubt, gained a real conveniency,though surely a very trifling one.直到现在为止,欧洲无疑地已经获得了实在的便利,不过那确是一种微不足道的便利。
14 dread Ekpz8     
vt.担忧,忧虑;惧怕,不敢;n.担忧,畏惧
参考例句:
  • We all dread to think what will happen if the company closes.我们都不敢去想一旦公司关门我们该怎么办。
  • Her heart was relieved of its blankest dread.她极度恐惧的心理消除了。
15 romps 070555dc1d908805761fb2a1798bfd31     
n.无忧无虑,快活( romp的名词复数 )v.嬉笑玩闹( romp的第三人称单数 );(尤指在赛跑或竞选等中)轻易获胜
参考例句:
  • Liz doesn't enjoy romps as much as other girls do. 莉兹不像别的女孩那样喜欢嬉戏吵闹。 来自辞典例句
  • We don't like romps and flirts, though we may act as if we did sometimes. 我们不喜欢轻佻女和调情郎,虽然有时我们表面上看似喜欢他们。 来自辞典例句
16 dab jvHzPy     
v.轻触,轻拍,轻涂;n.(颜料等的)轻涂
参考例句:
  • She returned wearing a dab of rouge on each cheekbone.她回来时,两边面颊上涂有一点淡淡的胭脂。
  • She gave me a dab of potatoes with my supper.她给我晚饭时,还给了一点土豆。
17 delightful 6xzxT     
adj.令人高兴的,使人快乐的
参考例句:
  • We had a delightful time by the seashore last Sunday.上星期天我们在海滨玩得真痛快。
  • Peter played a delightful melody on his flute.彼得用笛子吹奏了一支欢快的曲子。


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