Questions:
1. Plea write three paragraphs, one about each dead husband. Using the vocabulary:
poor, handsome, good singer, unlucky, dignified, good businessman,talkative, wealthy, farmer, healthy, favorite, intelligent, invertor
2. Plea infer the perfect husband of Mrs. Bickford from the way she describes her three husbands, beginning your paragraph with this phra “Mrs. Bickford’s perfect husband would…”
3. What is the significance of the ro in this story? And who derves the only ro in your opinion?
4. What do you think about the role of women in traditional New England society?
5. Plea retell the whole story.
The Only Ro
Sarah Orne Jewett
Just where the village abruptly ended, and the green mowing fields began, stood Mrs. Bickford's hou, looking down the road with all its windows, and topped by two prim chimneys that stood up like ears. It was placed with an end to the road, and fronted southward; you could follow a straight path from the gate past the front door and find Mrs. Bickford sitting by the last window of all in the kitchen, unless she were solemnly stepping about, prolonging the stern duties of her solitary houkeeping.
One day in early summer, when almost every one el in Fairfield had put her hou plants out of doors, there were still three flower pots on a kitchen window sill. Mrs. Bickford spent but little time over her ro and geranium and Jerusalem cherry-tree, although they had gained a kind of personality born of long association. They rarely undertook to bloom, but had most courageously maintained life in spite of their owner's unsympathetic but conscientious care. Later in the ason she would carry them out of doors, and leave them, until the time of frosts, under the shade of a great apple-tree, where they might make the best of what the summer had to give.
The afternoon sun was pouring in, the Jerusalem cherry-tree drooped its leaves in the heat and looked pale, when a neighbor, Miss Pendexter, came in from the next hou but one to make a friendly call. As she pasd the parlor with its shut blinds, and the sitting-room, also shaded carefully from the light, she wished, as she had done many times before, that somebody beside the owner might have the pleasure of living in and using so good and pleasant a hou. Mrs. Bickford always complained of having so much care, even while she valued herlf intelligently upon having the right to do as she plead with one of the best hous in Fairfield. Miss Pendexter was a cheerful, even gay little person, who always brought a pleasant flurry of excitement, and usually had a genuine though small piece of news to tell, or some new aspect of already received information.
Mrs. Bickford smiled as she looked up to e this sprightly neighbor coming. She had no gift at entertaining herlf, and was always glad, as one might say, to be taken off her own hands.
Miss Pendexter smiled back, as if she felt herlf to be equal to the occasion.
"How be you to-day?" the guest asked kindly, as she entered the kitchen. "Why, what a sight o' flowers, Mis' Bickford! What be you goin' to do with 'em all?"
Mrs. Bickford wore a grave expression as she glanced over her spectacles. "My sister's boy fetched 'em over," she answered. "You know my sister Parsons's a great hand to rai flowers, an' this boy takes after her. He said his mother thought the gardin never looked handsomer, and she picked me the to nd over. They was ndin' a team to Westbury for some fertilizer to put on the land, an' he come with the men, an' stopped to eat his dinner 'long o' me. He's been growin' fast, and looks peakëd. I expect sister 'Liza thought the ride, this pleasant day, would do him good. 'Liza nt word for me to come over and pass some days next week, but it ain't so that I can."
"Why, it's a pretty time of year to go off and make a little visit," suggested the neighbor encouragingly.
"I ain't got my sitting-room chamber carpet taken up yet," sighed Mrs. Bickford. "I do feel condemned. I might have done it to-day, but 't was all at end when I saw Tommy com
ing. There, he's a likely boy, an' so relished his dinner; I happened to be well prepared. I don't know but he's my favorite o' that family. Only I've been sittin' here thinkin', since he went, an' I can't remember that I ever was so belated with my spring cleaning."
"'T was owin' to the weather," explained Miss Pendexter. "None of us could be so smart as common this year, not even the lazy ones that always get one room done the first o' March, and brag of it to others' shame, and then never let on when they do the rest."
The two women laughed together cheerfully. Mrs. Bickford had put up the wide leaf of her large table between the windows and spread out the flowers. She was sorting them slowly into three heaps.
"Why, I do declare if you haven't got a ro in bloom yourlf!" exclaimed Miss Pendexter abruptly, as if the bud had not been announced weeks before, and its progress regularly commented upon. "Ain't it a lovely ro? Why, Mis' Bickford!"
"Yes 'm, it's out to-day," said Mrs. Bickford, with a somewhat plaintive air." I'm glad you come in so as to e it."
The bright flower was like a face. Somehow, the beauty and life of it were surprising in the plain room, like a gay little child who might suddenly appear in a doorway. Miss Pendexter forgot herlf and her hostess and the tangled mass of garden flowers in looking at the red ro. She even forgot that it was incumbent upon her to carry forward the conversation. Mrs. Bickford was subject to fits of untimely silence which made her friends anxiously sweep the corners of their minds in arch of something to say, but any one who looked at her now could easily e that it was not poverty of thought that made her speechless, but an overburdening 极为苦恼，负担重n of the inexpressible. 难以形容，用语言表达
