Seven（1）

Seven
On the following day Mrs. Sprot went up to London.
A few tentative remarks on her part had led immediately to various of-fers on the part of the inhabitants of Sans Souci to look after Betty.
When Mrs. Sprot, with many final adjurations to Betty to be a very goodgirl, had departed, Betty attached herself to Tuppence, who had elected totake morning duty.
“Play,” said Betty. “Play hide seek.”
She was talking more easily every day and had adopted a most fetchinghabit of laying her head on one side, fixing her interlocutor with a be-witching smile and murmuring “Peese.”
Tuppence had intended taking her for a walk, but it was raining hard, sothe two of them adjourned¹ to the bedroom where Betty led the way to thebottom drawer of the bureau where her playthings were kept.
“Hide Bonzo, shall we?” asked Tuppence.
But Betty had changed her mind and demanded instead:
“Wead me story.”
Tuppence pulled out a rather tattered² book from one end of the cup-board—to be interrupted by a squeal³ from Betty.
“No, no. Nasty .?.?. Bad. .?.?.”
Tuppence stared at her in surprise and then down at the book, whichwas a coloured version of Little Jack⁴ Horner.
“Was Jack a bad boy?” she asked. “Because he pulled out a plum?”
Betty reiterated⁵ with emphasis:
“B-a-ad!” and with a terrific effort, “Dirrrty!”
She seized the book from Tuppence and replaced it in the line, thentugged out an identical book from the other end of the shelf, announcingwith a beaming smile:
“K-k-klean ni’tice Jackorner!”
Tuppence realised that the dirty and worn books had been replaced bynew and cleaner editions and was rather amused. Mrs. Sprot was verymuch what Tuppence thought of as “the hygienic mother.” Always terri-fied of germs, of impure⁷ food, or of the child sucking a soiled toy.
Tuppence, brought up in a free and easy rectory life, was always rathercontemptuous of exaggerated hygiene⁸ and had brought up her own twochildren to absorb what she called a “reasonable amount” of dirt. How-ever, she obediently took out the clean copy of Jack Horner and read it tothe child with the comments proper to the occasion. Betty murmuring“That’s Jack!—Plum!—In a Pie!” pointing out these interesting objects witha sticky finger that bade fair to soon consign⁹ this second copy to the scrapheap. They proceeded to Goosey Goosey Gander and The Old Woman WhoLived in a Shoe, and then Betty hid the books and Tuppence took an amaz-ingly long time to find each of them, to Betty’s great glee, and so the morn-ing passed rapidly away.
After lunch Betty had her rest and it was then that Mrs. O’Rourke in-vited Tuppence into her room.
Mrs. O’Rourke’s room was very untidy and smelt¹⁰ strongly of pepper-mint, and stale cake with a faint odour of moth⁶ balls added. There werephotographs on every table of Mrs. O’Rourke’s children and grandchil-dren and nieces and nephews and great-nieces and great-nephews. Therewere so many of them that Tuppence felt as though she were looking at arealistically produced play of the late Victorian period.
“’Tis a grand way you have with children, Mrs. Blenkensop,” observedMrs. O’Rourke genially¹¹.
“Oh well,” said Tuppence, “with my own two—”
Mrs. O’Rourke cut in quickly:
“Two? It was three boys I understood you had?”
“Oh yes, three. But two of them are very near in age and I was thinkingof the days spent with them.”
“Ah! I see. Sit down now, Mrs. Blenkensop. Make yourself at home.”
Tuppence sat down obediently and wished that Mrs. O’Rourke did notalways make her feel so uncomfortable. She felt now exactly like Hanselor Gretel accepting the witch’s invitation.
“Tell me now,” said Mrs. O’Rourke. “What do you think of Sans Souci?”
Tuppence began a somewhat gushing¹² speech of eulogy¹³, but Mrs.
O’Rourke cut her short without ceremony.
“What I’d be asking you is if you don’t feel there’s something odd aboutthe place?”
“Odd? No, I don’t think so.”
“Not about Mrs. Perenna? You’re interested in her, you must allow. I’veseen you watching her and watching her.”
Tuppence flushed.
“She—she’s an interesting woman.”
“She is not then,” said Mrs. O’Rourke. “She’s a commonplace womanenough—that is if she’s what she seems. But perhaps she isn’t. Is that youridea?”
“Really, Mrs. O’Rourke, I don’t know what you mean.”
“Have you ever stopped to think that many of us are that way—differentto what we seem on the surface. Mr. Meadowes, now. He’s a puzzling kindof man. Sometimes I’d say he was a typical Englishman, stupid to the core,and there’s other times I’ll catch a look or a word that’s not stupid at all.
It’s odd that, don’t you think so?”
Tuppence said firmly:
“Oh, I really think Mr. Meadowes is very typical.”
“There are others. Perhaps you’ll know who I’ll be meaning?”
Tuppence shook her head.
“The name,” said Mrs. O’Rourke encouragingly, “begins with an S.”
She nodded her head several times.
With a sudden spark of anger and an obscure impulse to spring to thedefence of something young and vulnerable, Tuppence said sharply:
“Sheila’s just a rebel. One usually is, at that age.”
Mrs. O’Rourke nodded her head several times, looking just like an obesechina mandarin¹⁴ that Tuppence remembered on her Aunt Gracie’s mantel-piece. A vast smile tilted¹⁵ up the corners of her mouth. She said softly:
“You mayn’t know it, but Miss Minton’s Christian¹⁶ name is Sophia.”
“Oh,” Tuppence was taken aback. “Was it Miss Minton you meant?”
“It was not,” said Mrs. O’Rourke.
Tuppence turned away to the window. Queer how this old woman couldaffect her, spreading about her an atmosphere of unrest and fear. “Like amouse between a cat’s paws,” thought Tuppence. “That’s what I feel like.
.?.?.”
This vast smiling monumental old woman, sitting there, almost purring— and yet there was the pat pat of paws playing with something thatwasn’t, in spite of the purring, to be allowed to get away. .?.?.
“Nonsense—all nonsense! I imagine these things,” thought Tuppence,staring out of the window into the garden. The rain had stopped. Therewas a gentle patter of raindrops off the trees.
Tuppence thought: “It isn’t all my fancy. I’m not a fanciful person. Thereis something, some focus of evil there. If I could see—”
Her thoughts broke off abruptly¹⁷.
At the bottom of the garden the bushes parted slightly. In the gap a faceappeared, staring stealthily up at the house. It was the face of the foreignwoman who had stood talking to Carl von Deinim in the road.
It was so still, so unblinking in its regard, that it seemed to Tuppence asthough it was not human. Staring, staring up at the windows of SansSouci. It was devoid¹⁸ of expression, and yet there was—yes, undoubtedlythere was—menace about it. Immobile, implacable. It represented somespirit, some force, alien to Sans Souci and the commonplace banality¹⁹ ofEnglish guesthouse life. “So,” Tuppence thought, “might Jael have looked,awaiting to drive the nail through the forehead of sleeping Sisera.”
These thoughts took only a second or two to flash through Tuppence’smind. Turning abruptly from the window, she murmured something toMrs. O’Rourke, hurried out of the room and ran downstairs and out of thefront door.
Turning to the right she ran down the side garden path to where shehad seen the face. There was no one there now. Tuppence went throughthe shrubbery and out on to the road and looked up and down the hill. Shecould see no one. Where had the woman gone?
Vexed²⁰, she turned and went back into the grounds of Sans Souci. Couldshe have imagined the whole thing? No, the woman had been there.
Obstinately²¹ she wandered round the garden, peering behind bushes.
She got very wet and found no trace of the strange woman. She retracedher steps to the house with a vague feeling of foreboding—a queer form-less dread²² of something about to happen.
She did not guess, would never have guessed, what that something wasgoing to be.

1 adjourned   

（使）休会， （使）休庭( adjourn的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The court adjourned for lunch. 午餐时间法庭休庭。
• The trial was adjourned following the presentation of new evidence to the court. 新证据呈到庭上后，审讯就宣告暂停。

2 tattered   

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。

3 squeal   

v.发出长而尖的声音；n.长而尖的声音

参考例句：

• The children gave a squeal of fright.孩子们发出惊吓的尖叫声。
• There was a squeal of brakes as the car suddenly stopped.小汽车突然停下来时，车闸发出尖叫声。

4 jack   

n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克

参考例句：

• I am looking for the headphone jack.我正在找寻头戴式耳机插孔。
• He lifted the car with a jack to change the flat tyre.他用千斤顶把车顶起来换下瘪轮胎。

5 reiterated   

反复地说，重申( reiterate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• "Well, I want to know about it,'she reiterated. “嗯，我一定要知道你的休假日期，"她重复说。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹
• Some twenty-two years later President Polk reiterated and elaborated upon these principles. 大约二十二年之后，波尔克总统重申这些原则并且刻意阐释一番。

6 moth   

n.蛾，蛀虫

参考例句：

• A moth was fluttering round the lamp.有一只蛾子扑打着翅膀绕着灯飞。
• The sweater is moth-eaten.毛衣让蛀虫咬坏了。

7 impure   

adj.不纯净的，不洁的；不道德的，下流的

参考例句：

• The air of a big city is often impure.大城市的空气往往是污浊的。
• Impure drinking water is a cause of disease.不洁的饮用水是引发疾病的一个原因。

8 hygiene   

n.健康法，卫生学 （a.hygienic）

参考例句：

• Their course of study includes elementary hygiene and medical theory.他们的课程包括基础卫生学和医疗知识。
• He's going to give us a lecture on public hygiene.他要给我们作关于公共卫生方面的报告。

9 consign   

vt.寄售（货品），托运，交托，委托

参考例句：

• We cannot agree to consign the goods.我们不同意寄售此货。
• We will consign the goods to him by express.我们将以快递把货物寄给他。

10 smelt   

v.熔解，熔炼；n.银白鱼，胡瓜鱼

参考例句：

• Tin is a comparatively easy metal to smelt.锡是比较容易熔化的金属。
• Darby was looking for a way to improve iron when he hit upon the idea of smelting it with coke instead of charcoal.达比一直在寻找改善铁质的方法，他猛然想到可以不用木炭熔炼，而改用焦炭。

11 genially   

adv.亲切地，和蔼地；快活地

参考例句：

• The white church peeps out genially from behind the huts scattered on the river bank. 一座白色教堂从散布在岸上的那些小木房后面殷勤地探出头来。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• "Well, It'seems strange to see you way up here,'said Mr. Kenny genially. “咳，真没想到会在这么远的地方见到你，"肯尼先生亲切地说。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

12 gushing   

adj.迸出的；涌出的；喷出的；过分热情的v.喷，涌( gush的现在分词 )；滔滔不绝地说话

参考例句：

• blood gushing from a wound 从伤口冒出的血
• The young mother was gushing over a baby. 那位年轻的母亲正喋喋不休地和婴儿说话。 来自《简明英汉词典》

13 eulogy   

n.颂词；颂扬

参考例句：

• He needs no eulogy from me or from any other man. 他不需要我或者任何一个人来称颂。
• Mr.Garth gave a long eulogy about their achievements in the research.加思先生对他们的研究成果大大地颂扬了一番。

14 Mandarin   

n.中国官话，国语，满清官吏；adj.华丽辞藻的

参考例句：

• Just over one billion people speak Mandarin as their native tongue.大约有十亿以上的人口以华语为母语。
• Mandarin will be the new official language of the European Union.普通话会变成欧盟新的官方语言。

15 tilted   

v. 倾斜的

参考例句：

• Suddenly the boat tilted to one side. 小船突然倾向一侧。
• She tilted her chin at him defiantly. 她向他翘起下巴表示挑衅。

16 Christian   

adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒

参考例句：

• They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
• His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。

17 abruptly   

adv.突然地，出其不意地

参考例句：

• He gestured abruptly for Virginia to get in the car.他粗鲁地示意弗吉尼亚上车。
• I was abruptly notified that a half-hour speech was expected of me.我突然被通知要讲半个小时的话。

18 devoid   

adj.全无的，缺乏的

参考例句：

• He is completely devoid of humour.他十分缺乏幽默。
• The house is totally devoid of furniture.这所房子里什么家具都没有。

19 banality   

n.陈腐；平庸；陈词滥调

参考例句：

• Neil's ability to utter banalities never ceased to amaze me.每次我都很惊讶，尼尔怎么能讲出这么索然无味的东西。
• He couldn't believe the banality of the question.他无法相信那问题竟如此陈腐。

20 vexed   

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

参考例句：

• The conference spent days discussing the vexed question of border controls. 会议花了几天的时间讨论边境关卡这个难题。
• He was vexed at his failure. 他因失败而懊恼。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

21 obstinately   

ad.固执地，顽固地

参考例句：

• He obstinately asserted that he had done the right thing. 他硬说他做得对。
• Unemployment figures are remaining obstinately high. 失业数字仍然顽固地居高不下。

22 dread   

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。