高级英语Lesson12TheLoons课文内容.docx

1、高级英语高级英语 Lesson12TheLoons 课文内容课文内容 高级英语 Lesson-12-The-Loons-课文内容(总 10页)The Loons Margarel Laurence Just below Manawaka,where the Wachakwa River ran brown and noisy over the pebbles,the scrub oak and grey-green willow and chokecherry bushes grew in a dense thicket.In a clearing at the centre of the t

2、hicket stood the Tonnerre familys shack.The basis at this dwelling was a small square cabin made of poplar poles and chinked with mud,which had been built by Jules Tonnerre some fifty years before,when he came back from Batoche with a bullet in his thigh,the year that Riel was hung and the voices of

3、 the Metis entered their long silence.Jules had only intended to stay the winter in the Wachakwa Valley,but the family was still there in the thirties,when I was a child.As the Tonnerres had increased,their settlement had been added to,until the clearing at the foot of the town hill was a chaos of l

4、ean-tos,wooden packing cases,warped lumber,discarded car types,ramshackle chicken coops,tangled strands of barbed wire and rusty tin cans.The Tonnerres were French half breeds,and among themselves they spoke a patois that was neither Cree nor French.Their English was broken and full of obscenities.T

5、hey did not belong among the Cree of the Galloping Mountain reservation,further north,and they did not belong among the Scots-Irish and Ukrainians of Manawaka,either.They were,as my Grandmother MacLeod would have put it,neither flesh,fowl,nor good salt herring.When their men were not working at odd

6、jobs or as section hands on the.R.they lived on relief.In the summers,one of the Tonnerre youngsters,with a face that seemed totally unfamiliar with laughter,would knock at the doors of the towns brick houses and offer for sale a lard-pail full of bruised wild strawberries,and if he got as much as a

7、 quarter he would grab the coin and run before the customer had time to change her mind.Sometimes old Jules,or his son Lazarus,would get mixed up in a Saturday-night brawl,and would hit out at whoever was nearest or howl drunkenly among the offended shoppers on Main Street,and then the Mountie would

8、 put them for the night in the barred cell underneath the Court House,and the next morning they would be quiet again.Piquette Tonnerre,the daughter of Lazarus,was in my class at school.She was older than I,but she had failed several grades,perhaps because her attendance had always been sporadic and

9、her interest in schoolwork negligible.Part of the reason she had missed a lot of school was that she had had tuberculosis of the bone,and had once spent many months in hospital.I knew this because my father was the doctor who had looked after her.Her sickness was almost the only thing I knew about h

10、er,however.Otherwise,she existed for me only as a vaguely embarrassing presence,with her hoarse voice and her clumsy limping walk and her grimy cotton dresses that were always miles too long.I was neither friendly nor unfriendly towards her.She dwelt and moved somewhere within my scope of vision,but

11、 I did not actually notice her very much until that peculiar summer when I was eleven.I dont know what to do about that kid.my father said at dinner one evening.Piquette Tonnerre,I mean.The damn bones flared up again.Ive had her in hospital for quite a while now,and its under control all right,but I

12、 hate like the dickens to send her home again.Couldnt you explain to her mother that she has to rest a lot my mother said.The mothers not there my father replied.She took off a few years back.Cant say I blame her.Piquette cooks for them,and she says Lazarus would never do anything for himself as lon

13、g as shes there.Anyway,I dont think shed take much care of herself,once she got back.Shes only thirteen,after all.Beth,I was thinkingWhat about taking her up to Diamond Lake with us this summer A couple of months rest would give that bone a much better chance.My mother looked stunned.But Ewen-what a

14、bout Roddie and Vanessa Shes not contagious,my father said.And it would be company for Vanessa.Oh dear,my mother said in distress,Ill bet anything she has nits in her hair.For Petes sake,my father said crossly,do you think Matron would let her stay in the hospital for all this time like that Dont be

15、 silly,Beth.Grandmother MacLeod,her delicately featured face as rigid as a cameo,now brought her mauve-veined hands together as though she were about to begin prayer.Ewen,if that half breed youngster comes along to Diamond Lake,Im not going,she announced.Ill go to Morags for the summer.I had trouble

16、 in stifling my urge to laugh,for my mother brightened visibly and quickly tried to hide it.If it came to a choice between Grandmother MacLeod and Piquette,Piquette would win hands down,nits or not.It might be quite nice for you,at that,she mused.You havent seen Morag for over a year,and you might e

17、njoy being in the city for a while.Well,Ewen dear,you do what you think best.If you think it would do Piquette some good,then we II be glad to have her,as long as she behaves herself.So it happened that several weeks later,when we all piled into my fathers old Nash,surrounded by suitcases and boxes

18、of provisions and toys for my ten-month-old brother,Piquette was with us and Grandmother MacLeod,miraculously,was not.My father would only be staying at the cottage for a couple of weeks,for he had to get back to his practice,but the rest of us would stay at Diamond Lake until the end of August.Our

19、cottage was not named,as many were,Dew Drop Inn or Bide-a-Wee,or Bonnie Doon”.The sign on the roadway bore in austere letters only our name,MacLeod.It was not a large cottage,but it was on the lakefront.You could look out the windows and see,through the filigree of the spruce trees,the water glisten

20、ing greenly as the sun caught it.All around the cottage were ferns,and sharp-branched raspberrybushes,and moss that had grown over fallen tree trunks,If you looked carefully among the weeds and grass,you could find wild strawberry plants which were in white flower now and in another month would bear

21、 fruit,the fragrant globes hanging like miniaturescarlet lanterns on the thin hairy stems.The two grey squirrels were still there,gossiping at us from the tall spruce beside the cottage,and by the end of the summer they would again be tame enough to take pieces of crust from my hands.The broad moose

22、antlers that hung above the back door were a little more bleached and fissured after the winter,but otherwise everything was the same.I raced joyfully around my kingdom,greeting all the places I had not seen for a year.My brother,Roderick,who had not been born when we were here last summer,sat on th

23、e car rug in the sunshine and examined a brown spruce cone,meticulously turning it round and round in his small and curious hands.My mother and father toted the luggage from car to cottage,exclaiming over how well the place had wintered,no broken windows,thank goodness,no apparent damage from storm

24、felled branches or snow.Only after I had finished looking around did I notice Piquette.She was sitting on the swing her lame leg held stiffly out,and her other foot scuffing the ground as she swung slowly back and forth.Her long hair hung black and straight around her shoulders,and her broad coarse-

25、featured face bore no expression-it was blank,as though she no longer dwelt within her own skull,as though she had gone elsewhere.I approached her very hesitantly.Want to come and play Piquette looked at me with a sudden flash of scorn.I aint a kid,she said.Wounded,I stamped angrily away,swearing I

26、would not speak to her for the rest of the summer.In the days that followed,however,Piquette began to interest me,and l began to want to interest her.My reasons did not appear bizarre to me.Unlikely as it may seem,I had only just realised that the Tonnerre family,whom I had always heard Called half

27、breeds,were actually Indians,or as near as made no difference.My acquaintance with Indians was not expensive.I did not remember ever having seen a real Indian,and my new awareness that Piquette sprang from the people of Big Bear and Poundmaker,of Tecumseh,of the Iroquois who had eaten Father Br beuf

28、s heart-all this gave her an instant attraction in my eyes.I was devoted reader of Pauline Johnson at this age,and sometimes would orate aloud and in an exalted voice,West Wind,blow from your prairie nest,Blow from the mountains,blow from the west-and so on.It seemed to me that Piquette must be in s

29、ome way a daughter of the forest,a kind of junior prophetess of the wilds,who might impart to me,if I took the right approach,some of the secrets which she undoubtedly knew-where the whippoorwill made her nest,how the coyote reared her young,or whatever it was that it said in Hiawatha.I set about ga

30、ining Piquettes trust.She was not allowed to go swimming,with her bad leg,but I managed to lure her down to the beach-or rather,she came because there was nothing else to do.The water was always icy,for the lake was fed by springs,but I swam like a dog,thrashing my arms and legs around at such speed

31、 and with such an output of energy that I never grew cold.Finally,when I had enough,I came out and sat beside Piquette on the sand.When she saw me approaching,her hands squashed flat the sand castle she had been building,and she looked at me sullenly,without speaking.Do you like this place I asked,a

32、fter a while,intending to lead on from there into the question of forest lore.Piquette shrugged.Its okay.Good as anywhere.I love it,1 said.We come here every summer.So what Her voice was distant,and I glanced at her uncertainly,wondering what I could have said wrong.Do you want to come for a walk I

33、asked her.We wouldnt need to go far.If you walk just around the point there,you come to a bay where great big reeds grow in the water,and all kinds of fish hang around there.Want to Come on.She shook her head.Your dad said I aint supposed to do no more walking than I got to.I tried another line.I bet you know a lot about the woods and all that,eh I began respectfully.Piquette looked at me from her