书城教材教辅新课标英语学习资源库-好孩子的故事
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第10章 A Dog is Tale(5)

They called and called—days and nights, it seemed to me. So long that the hunger and thirst near drove me mad, and I recognized that I was getting very weak. When you are this way you sleep a great deal, and I did. Once I woke in an awful fright—it seemed to me that the calling was right there in the garret garret n.顶楼! And so it was: it was Sadies voice, and she was crying, my name was falling from her lips all broken, poor thing, and I could not believe my ears for the joy of it when I heard her say: “Come back to us—oh, come back to us, and forgive—it is all so sad without our...”

他们老在叫了又叫——我好像觉得叫了好几天好几夜似的。时间拖得太久,我又饿又渴,简直难受得要发疯,我知道我已经很没有劲了。你到了这种情形的时候,就睡得很多,我也就大睡特睡起来。有一次我吓得要命地醒过来——我好像觉得喊声就在那顶楼里!果然是这样;那是莎第的声音,她一面还在哭,可怜的孩子,她嘴里叫出我的名字来,老是杂着哭声,后来我听见她说:“回我们这儿来吧——啊,回我们这儿来吧,别生气——你不回来,我们真是太……”这使我非常高兴,简直不敢相信自己的耳朵。

I broke in with such a grateful little yelp, and the next moment Sadie was plunging and stumbling through the darkness and the lumberlumber n.<;美>;木材, 无用的杂物(如破旧家具), 废物,隆隆声vt.砍伐木材, 乱堆 vi.伐木, 喧闹地向前走, 笨重地行动 and shouting for the family to hear, “Shes found, shes found! ”

我感激得什么似的,突然汪汪地叫了一声,莎第马上就从黑暗中和废物堆里一颠一跌地钻出去,大声嚷着让她家里的人听见,“找到她啦,找到她啦!”

The days that followed—well, they were wonderful. The mother and Sadie and the servants—why, they just seemed to worshipworship n.崇拜, 礼拜, 尊敬 vi.敬神, 拜神 vt.崇拜, 尊敬 me. They couldnt seem to make me a bed that was fine enough, and as for food, they couldnt be satisfied with anything but game and delicacies that were out of season, and every day the friends and neighbors flocked in to hear about my heroism—that was the name they called it by, and it means agriculture. I remember my mother pulling it on a kennelkennel n.狗窝, 狗屋, 阴沟 vt.置于狗窝, 宿于狗舍 vi.进狗窝 once, and explaining it in that way, but didnt say what agriculture was, except that it was synonymous with intramural incandescence, and a dozen times a day Mrs. Gray and Sadie would tell the tale to newcomers, and say I risked my life to save the babys, and both of us had burns to prove it, and then the company would pass me around and pet me and exclaim about me, and you could see the pride in the eyes of Sadie and her mother, and when the people wanted to know what made me limp, they looked ashamed and changed the subject, and sometimes when people hunted them this way and that way with questions about it, it looked to me as if they were going to cry.

以后的那些日子——哈,那才真是了不得哩。莎第和她母亲和仆人们——咳,他们简直就像是崇拜我呀。他们似乎是无论给我铺一个多好的床,也嫌不够讲究,至于吃的东西呢,他们非给我弄些还不到时令的稀罕野味和讲究的食品,否则就觉得不满意,每天都有朋友和邻居们成群地到这儿来听他们说我的“英勇行为”——这是他们给我所干的那桩事情取的名称,意思就和“农业”一样。我记得有一次我母亲把这个名词带到一个狗窝里去卖弄,她就是这么解释的,可是她没有说“农业”是怎么回事,只说那和“壁间热”是同义词。格莱太太和莎第给新来的客人说这个故事,每天要说十几遍,她们说我冒了性命的危险救了娃娃的命,我们俩都有火伤可以证明,于是客人们就抱着我一个一个地传过去,把我摸一摸、拍一拍,大声称赞我,您可以看得出莎第和她母亲的眼睛里那种得意的神气,人家要是问起我为什么瘸了腿,她们就显得不好意思,赶快转换话题,有时候人家把这桩事情问来问去,老不放松她们,我就觉得她们简直好像是要哭似的。

And this was not all the glory glory n.荣誉, 光荣, no, the masters friends came, a whole twenty of the most distinguished people, and had me in the laboratory, and discussed me as if I was a kind of discovery. And some of them said it was wonderful in a dumb beast, the finest exhibition of instinct they could call to mind, but the master said, with vehemence vehemencen.热烈, 激烈, 热心, 强烈, “Its far above instinct, its REASON, and many a man, privileged to be saved and go with you and me to a better world by right of its possession, has less of it that this poor silly quadruped thats foreordained to perish”. And then he laughed, and said: “Why, look at me—Im a sarcasm sarcasm n.挖苦, 讽刺! bless you, with all my grand intelligence, the only think I inferred was that the dog had gone mad and was destroying the child, whereas but for the beasts intelligence—its REASON, I tell you!—the child would have perished! ”

这还不是全部的光荣哩,不,主人的朋友们来了,整整20个最出色的人物,他们把我带到实验室里,大家讨论我,好像我是一种新发现的东西似的,其中有几个人说一只畜生居然有这种表现真是了不起,他们说这是他们所能想得起的最妙的本能的表现。可是主人劲头十足地说,“这比本能高得多,这是理智,有许多人虽然是因为有了理智,可以得天主的拯救,和你我一同升天,可是他们的理智还不及命中注定不能升天的小畜生这么个可怜的傻东西哩。”他说罢就大笑起来,然后又说,“咳,你看看我吧——我真是可笑!好家伙,我有了那么了不得的聪明才智,可是我所推想得到的不过是认为这只狗发了疯,要把孩子弄死,其实要不是这个小家伙的智力——这是理智,实在的!——要是没有它的理智,那孩子早就完蛋啦!”

They disputed and disputed, and I was the very center of subject of it all, and I wished my mother could know that this grand honor had come to me, it would have made her proud.

他们翻来覆去地争论,我就是争论的中心和主题,我希望我母亲能够知道我已经得到了这种了不起的荣誉,那一定会使她很得意的。

Then they discussed optics optics n.光学, as they called it, and whether a certain injury to the brain would produce blindness or not, but they could not agree about it, and said they must test it by experiment by and by. And next they discussed plants, and that interested me, because in the summer Sadie and I had planted seeds—I helped her dig the holes, you know—and after days and days a little shrub or a flower came up there, and it was a wonder how that could happen, But it did, and I wished I could talk—I would have told those people about it and shown then how much I knew, and been all alive with the subject, but I didnt care for the optics, it was dull, and when the came back to it again it bored me, and I went to sleep.