"Don't you think," Mrs. Douglas said, when the sheets had been rearranged in order, "that you'd better read me what you've written?"
Ann shook her head. "I think not. It's very majestical and not quite true. You see, if you're writing a Life, it's no good making a bald narrative2 of it. One has to polish it up a bit for the sake of posterity3. I'm making you a very noble character, I assure you. As old Mrs. Buchanan said to me, after seeing me in some tableaux4 vivants, 'My, you were lovely. I didna ken5 ye.' The children will be proud to think you were their grandmother."
Mrs. Douglas turned to take up her stocking, with a bored look.
"I wonder," she said, "that you can be bothered talking so much nonsense."
"I wonder, too," said Ann, "with the world in the state it is in. But I do agree, there is nothing so trying as a facetious6 person! I wish I hadn't such high spirits. No wonder, Mother, that you are such a depressed7 wee body: to have had a husband and family who were always in uproarious spirits was enough to darken anybody's outlook on life. The first thing I remember about Glasgow is that you had a curly yellow coat and a sort of terra-cotta bonnet8."
Mrs. Douglas' face lit up with a smile that made her look almost girlish. "That coat! I do remember it well. It was 'old gold' trimmed with plush of the same shade. My father bought it for me. I met him one day in Princes Street, and I must have looked very shabby, for he looked me up and down and said, 'Nell, surely the Sustentation Fund is very low,' and he took me into Jenner's, and got me that coat and bonnet. He got you a coat, too, and a delicious little astrakhan cap like a Cossack's. You were the prettiest thing in it, for your hair curled out under it like pure gold."
"I must have been a picturesque9 child," said Ann complacently10, "for several times, you remember, artists asked me to sit for them." Then she laughed. "But I needn't boast about that, for my pride once got a severe fall. One day, at Etterick, we came on an artist (he turned out to be someone quite well known) sketching11 up the burnside. I obligingly posed myself in the foreground, and—he gave me sixpence to go away. And I took it!"
Mrs. Douglas smiled at the reminiscence, but her thoughts were still with the "old gold coat."
"It always pays to get a good thing. That coat wore and wore until everybody got tired of seeing me wear it, and it never really got very shabby—the bonnet, too."
"I suppose you would be about thirty," Ann said. "You said to us walking down to church one day that you were thirty, and then you said you would need to get a new bonnet. I looked at you and thought to myself: 'I shan't say it, but I'm quite sure it isn't worth while for Mother to get a new bonnet; she can't live much longer.' I was shocked to hear that you had attained12 to such a great age, for I thought at thirty one was just toppling into the grave. Wasn't Glasgow a great change from Kirkcaple? 'East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.'"
"Oh, we hadn't much time to worry over East and West; we had our work to do. We were very fortunate in getting a suitable house in a nice district. We might have been miles from a city in that road of decent grey houses, each in its own quiet garden. And the gardens all opened into an avenue of beautiful trees that had once been the entrance to the big house of the district. We couldn't have been more happily situated13, and it was a comfortable house with good-sized rooms and—what your father specially14 prized—a well-placed staircase with shallow steps. It also contained what we had never had before, a basement flat; but it wasn't as bad as it sounded, for the house was built on a slope, and the kitchen, though downstairs, was on a level with the garden."
"We children didn't mind the basement," said Ann; "it was a joy to us, full of funny corners, excellent for hide-and-seek. One door had the legend Dark Room painted on it, and was an endless source of speculation15. Could the former tenant16 have been a Nihilist? or a murderer? In the bright hours of the morning we liked to dally17 with those thoughts, but when the shadows lengthened18 we told each other that he was only a man who tried to develop his own negatives. We never felt in the least cabined or confined in Glasgow. It was a joke against me for long that when we first arrived I reproved Mark and Robbie for walking on the garden wall, saying, 'We must be very genteel now that we live in Glasgow.'"
"You didn't live up to that counsel of perfection, my dear. Anything less genteel than your behaviour! One of the first things you and Mark did was to attend a wedding in the avenue—and when I say 'attend,' I mean you stood outside the gate of the house with a lot of other abandoned children and shouted, 'Hard up!' when the bride and bridegroom left without scattering19 pennies. Jeanie Tod nearly wept with shame when she told me of it."
"I remember Jeanie Tod," said Ann. "She was small, but very determined20. She had a brother a sailor, and used to let me read his letters. One of them described the writer riding in a rickshaw, and finished: 'By Jingo, dear sister, you should have seen your Brother that Day.' ... It must have been difficult for you, Mother, to leave friendly Kirkcaple and go to a great city where you knew almost no one. Weren't you lonely at first?"
"Never for a moment; we just seemed to tumble in among friends."
"The church people, you mean?"
"Oh no—well, of course, they were friends—very dear friends—but you need outside friends, too. I found three very good ones waiting for me in Glasgow."
"One was Mrs. Burnett!" said Ann.
"Yes. Mrs. Burnett was my first friend. The day we arrived in the avenue—we were next-door neighbours—was the funeral day of her eldest21 daughter. With most women that would have been an excuse not to come near us for months, but she came almost at once. She said that it made a link between us, and that, in a way, our coming helped a little to fill the blank left by the dear daughter's death. Her kindness and interest were very grateful to me, a stranger in a strange land, or, as Marget put it, 'a coo on an unco loan.' It was a great pleasure to run in for an hour to the Burnetts'; it was such a big, comfortable, perfectly22 kept house (the servants had been with them for twenty and thirty years, and had grown into Mrs. Burnett's dainty ways), and there was always a welcome awaiting one at any time."
"They had a splendid garden," said Ann, "with a swing and all manner of amusing things; and I think they really liked having children to tea. I remember their Hallow-e'en parties!"
"Mrs. Burnett looked like an abbess," Mrs. Douglas said. "She always wore a soft black dress—cashmere or silk—and a tiny white lace shawl turned back over her white hair. The style of dress suited her perfectly, for she was very tall and graceful24, and glided25 rather than walked. I admired her very much, being so far from dignified26 myself, and I used to wonder how she kept so perfectly tidy and unruffled when I always looked as if I had been in the heart of a whirlwind."
"Oh, Mother!" laughed Ann, "just look at the difference in the two lives! Mrs. Burnett with her family grown up, a household running on well-oiled wheels, and a serenity27 partly natural and partly gained through long years' experience; you in the very forefront of the battle, with an incredibly wild and wicked family, a church to run, small means, and not an ounce of serenity anywhere in your little active body."
"Well, but now that I have leisure I'm not any more serene," Mrs. Douglas complained. "But it was comfort unspeakable just to see Mrs. Burnett, to know that she was near. We used to think that she sat and wondered what she would send us next, she loved so to give."
"I never smell a hyacinth," said Ann, "but I think of Mrs. Burnett. She always sent us the very first pot of hyacinths that came out in the greenhouse."
Mrs. Douglas nodded. "Mrs. Burnett would like to be remembered by spring flowers. She loved them as she loved all young things. Her one little grandson, Jimmie, was the same age as Davie. Her great regret when she was dying was that she wouldn't see the two boys grow up. Ah, but if she could have known—they didn't grow up very far. Jimmie was killed at the landing in Gallipoli, and Davie at Arras, when they were still only little boys."
"You have always been well off for friends, Mother," Ann said, breaking a silence. "In Inchkeld, in Kirkcaple, Glasgow. It's because you are such a friendly person yourself."
"Oh, me! I often feel myself a poor creature, with little to give in return for treasure-houses opened to me."
Ann laughed unbelievingly and said, "I'm bound to admit we have had some wonderful friends—Miss Barbara Stewart for one. She was one of your three friends, wasn't she?"
"Indeed she was! Miss Barbara—to say her name gives me a warm feeling at my heart."
"Miss Barbara," Ann repeated. "What a lot the name conjures28 up! I don't know anyone who made more of life. She might have been a lonely, soured old woman, for she was the very last of her family, wasn't she? but to the great family of the poor and the afflicted29 she said, 'You are my brothers and my sisters.' I wonder how many men in Glasgow owe their start in life to Miss Barbara? I wonder how many lonely women died blessing30 her that it was their own and not a workhouse roof that covered them at the end? I wonder how many betrayed souls sinking hopelessly into hell had a succouring hand held out to them by that sharp-tongued spinster? How did you know Miss Barbara so well? She didn't belong to the church."
"Not in our time, but all her people had belonged. Miss Barbara had gone to the other side of Glasgow, and it was too far for her to come. She always took a great interest; but what good work was she not interested in? She sat there in her vast, early-Victorian dining-room, wrapped in innumerable shawls and woolly coats, for she suspected draughts31 from every quarter, a tall woman, broadly made, with a large, strong face. What would I not give now to go into that room and see those whimsical, shrewd, kind eyes, and feel the wealth of welcome in those big soft hands as she rose to greet me, with shawls falling from her like leaves in Vallombrosa. She generally received me with abuse. 'What d'you mean by coming out on such a day? You'll go home with a chill and bother your poor family by lying in bed. Here—see—sit down in that chair and hold the soles of your boots to the fire,' all the time doing things for one's comfort, ringing for tea to be brought in, kneeling down to make fresh toast. She hated to trouble anyone; it was almost an obsession32 with her, the desire not to be a nuisance. She had a very aged33 cook, who had been in the Stewart family all her life, and it was said that Miss Barbara, herself nearly eighty, got up every morning and carried tea to her before she would let her rise to her duties."
"Dear Miss Barbara," Ann said, stroking the Tatler's smoke-grey fur, "she wasn't only good, she was delightfully34 funny. Her passion for cats!—not for well-fed, comfortable cats, but for poor, lean, homeless ones. She used to send me into a butcher's shop to buy a quarter of a pound of mince-collops, and then down area steps carrying it (the horrid35 stuff oozing36 clammily through the paper) after some terrified animal that fled from me, paying no attention to my blandishments. She was utterly37 unlike the ordinary rich old woman, flattered and kowtowed to for her money until she thinks she isn't made of ordinary clay. I don't think Miss Barbara ever gave a thought to herself; she hadn't time, she was so busy looking after other people."
"In her youth," said Mrs. Douglas, "Miss Barbara was a great worker in the slums of Glasgow, but when I knew her she wasn't able for that, and people had to go to her. The clergy38 waited on her by the dozen, and everyone else who wanted money for good works, not to speak of many who were mere23 cranks and charlatans39. Everyone who came was admitted, and Miss Barbara wouldn't have listened to a word against any of them."
"No," said Ann; "she would have said with Falstaff, 'Tush, man, mortal men, mortal men'; or, rather, she wouldn't, for she had probably never heard of Falstaff, and thought that anyone who could read Shakespeare for pleasure was eccentric almost to madness. If you told her of a book you had enjoyed, she would say, 'Is it true? No? Well, then——' But everyone who went to No. 10 got a hearing."
"Everyone got a hearing," said Mrs. Douglas, "and whatever else they got, you may be sure a good tea was never wanting. Many a tired and hungry voyager on life's ocean found sanctuary40 at No. 10. You remember when I had that bad breakdown41, and you were all worn out with me, how Miss Barbara took me to No. 10 and coaxed42 and scolded me back to health! And I was too miserably43 ill and weak even to pretend gratitude44, and, driving with her, I used to envy all the happy people walking on their own feet, and one day she said to me, with an amused twinkle in her eyes, 'Ay, and you never thought to pity the poor folk in their carriages before.''
"I think she was funniest at Etterick," said Ann. "She kept regretting all the time the street lamps and pavements, and the sight of Tweed winding45 in links through the glens vexed46 her practical soul. 'What a waste!' she said; 'couldn't it be cut straight like a canal?' Father's face! How Miss Barbara would have hated the Green Glen!" She jumped up to open the door for the Tatler. "He's tired of us. He wants to try Marget and Mysie. Who was your third great friend, Mother? You had so many, I'm interested to know which you considered your greatest."
"Mrs. Lang."
"Oh, of course—Mrs. Lang. She's been dead for a long time now."
Mrs. Douglas sighed. "Nearly all my friends are dead."
"Because," said Ann, "you always liked old people best, and made your friends among women much older than yourself. And now you mourn and say your friends are nearly all gone, and talk about the elect being gathered in—but, elect or not, people are apt to be gathered in if they are over eighty."
Mrs. Douglas sighed more deeply, and, ignoring her daughter's bracing47 remarks, said, "I can't care for new friends as I cared for the old; they can't go back with me. I'm not interested in their talk.... Mrs. Lang was a very good friend to me at my busiest time. What a capable woman she was. There was nothing she couldn't do with her hands. When the boys went to Oxford48 she practically made their outfits49, and made them beautifully. She used to say that it was a kindness to let her help, for she had had such a busy life, she simply couldn't rest. I know now what she meant."
"I remember Mrs. Lang very well," Ann said—"a stately woman who rocked a little when she walked. She had crinkly white hair parted in the middle, and keen, blue eyes in a fresh-coloured face. I always think of her as dressed in a seal-skin mantle50 trimmed with skunk51 and a Mary Stuart bonnet."
Mrs. Douglas laid down her stocking. "Yes. I remember her best like that. I did like to see her come rocking in at the gate, though sometimes I was a little afraid of her. Your father used to say she was a typical Scotswoman of the old school—a type that has almost disappeared. There wasn't a trace of sickly sentiment about her. She was a stern, God-fearing woman, with a strong brain and a big heart and an unbending will. She lived to be nearly ninety, and to the end her mind was as clear as a bell. In the last letter she wrote to me: 'I go out for a walk every day, no matter what the weather is, and I am twice in church every Sabbath.'"
"Didn't Mrs. Lang come from Fife?" Ann asked. "I know there was always an east windy tang about her! She had nothing of the soft, couthy Glasgow manner. I was really very scared of her. When she discovered me hopelessly ignorant (as she was always doing) about something she thought I should have known all about, like jam-making, she had a way of saying: 'You amuse me very much,' which was utterly crushing. And she was very much given to contradicting people flat, generally prefacing her remarks with 'You will pardon me!' delivered like a sledge-hammer. Well, it's too late to write anything to-night. Marget and Mysie will be in for prayers in a few minutes, and I've an interesting book to finish. To-morrow I shall add another stone to the noble pile I am raising to you—but, no, it can't be to-morrow. To-morrow I go to Birkshaw for two nights. Mother, why did I say I would go? I can't bear to leave Dreams for two whole nights."
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1
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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posterity
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| n.后裔，子孙，后代 | |
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tableaux
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| n.舞台造型，（由活人扮演的）静态画面、场面；人构成的画面或场景( tableau的名词复数 )；舞台造型；戏剧性的场面；绚丽的场景 | |
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ken
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| n.视野，知识领域 | |
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facetious
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| adj.轻浮的，好开玩笑的 | |
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depressed
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| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
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bonnet
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| n.无边女帽；童帽 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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complacently
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| adv. 满足地, 自满地, 沾沾自喜地 | |
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sketching
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| n.草图 | |
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attained
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| （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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situated
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| adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的 | |
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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tenant
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| n.承租人；房客；佃户；v.租借，租用 | |
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dally
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| v.荒废(时日)，调情 | |
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lengthened
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| （时间或空间）延长，伸长( lengthen的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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19
scattering
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| n.[物]散射；散乱，分散；在媒介质中的散播adj.散乱的；分散在不同范围的；广泛扩散的；（选票）数量分散的v.散射(scatter的ing形式)；散布；驱散 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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eldest
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| adj.最年长的，最年老的 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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glided
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| v.滑动( glide的过去式和过去分词 )；掠过；（鸟或飞机 ） 滑翔 | |
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dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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conjures
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| 用魔术变出( conjure的第三人称单数 )； 祈求，恳求； 变戏法； （变魔术般地） 使…出现 | |
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afflicted
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| 使受痛苦，折磨( afflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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draughts
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| n. <英>国际跳棋 | |
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obsession
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| n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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delightfully
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| 大喜，欣然 | |
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horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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36
oozing
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| v.（浓液等）慢慢地冒出，渗出( ooze的现在分词 )；使（液体）缓缓流出；（浓液）渗出，慢慢流出 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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clergy
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| n.[总称]牧师，神职人员 | |
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charlatans
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| n.冒充内行者，骗子( charlatan的名词复数 ) | |
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sanctuary
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| n.圣所，圣堂，寺庙；禁猎区，保护区 | |
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41
breakdown
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| n.垮，衰竭；损坏，故障，倒塌 | |
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42
coaxed
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| 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 | |
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43
miserably
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| adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地 | |
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44
gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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45
winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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46
vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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47
bracing
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| adj.令人振奋的 | |
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Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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49
outfits
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| n.全套装备( outfit的名词复数 )；一套服装；集体；组织v.装备，配置设备，供给服装( outfit的第三人称单数 ) | |
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50
mantle
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| n.斗篷，覆罩之物，罩子；v.罩住，覆盖，脸红 | |
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51
skunk
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| n.臭鼬，黄鼠狼；v.使惨败，使得零分；烂醉如泥 | |
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