【英文原著类】The Cricket on the Hearth(灶上蟋蟀).pdf

The Cricket on the Hearth
The Cricket on the
Hearth
1
The Cricket on the Hearth
CHAPTER I - Chirp the First
THE kettle began it! Don't tell me what Mrs. Peerybingle said. I
know better. Mrs. Peerybingle may leave it on record to the end of time
that she couldn't say which of them began it; but, I say the kettle did. I
ought to know, I hope! The kettle began it, full five minutes by the little
waxy-faced Dutch clock in the corner, before the Cricket uttered a chirp.
As if the clock hadn't finished striking, and the convulsive little
Haymaker at the top of it, jerking away right and left with a scythe in front
of a Moorish Palace, hadn't mowed down half an acre of imaginary grass
before the Cricket joined in at all!
Why, I am not naturally positive. Every one knows that. I wouldn't
set my own opinion against the opinion of Mrs. Peerybingle, unless I were
quite sure, on any account whatever. Nothing should induce me. But,
this is a question of act. And the fact is, that the kettle began it, at least
five minutes before the Cricket gave any sign of being in existence.
Contradict me, and I'll say ten.
Let me narrate exactly how it happened. I should have proceeded to
do so in my very first word, but for this plain consideration - if I am to tell
a story I must begin at the beginning; and how is it possible to begin at the
beginning, without beginning at the kettle?
It appeared as if there were a sort of match, or trial of skill, you must
understand, between the kettle and the Cricket. And this is what led to it,
and how it came about.
Mrs. Peerybingle, going out into the raw twilight, and clicking over
the wet stones in a pair of pattens that worked innumerable rough
impressions of the first proposition in Euclid all about the yard - Mrs.
Peerybingle filled the kettle at the water-butt. Presently returning, less the
pattens (and a good deal less, for they were tall and Mrs. Peerybingle was
but short), she set the kettle on the fi