The Drover's Wife by Henry Lawson
The two-roomed hou is built of round timber, slabs, and stringy-bark, and floored with split slabs. A big bark kitchen standing at one end is larger than the hou itlf, veranda included.
Bush all around - bush with no horizon, for the country is flat. No ranges in the distance. The bush consists of stunted, rotten native apple-trees. No undergrowth. Nothing to relieve the eye save the darker green of a few she-oaks which are sighing above the narrow, almost waterless creek. Nineteen miles to the nearest sign of civilisation - a shanty on the main road.
The drover, an ex-squatter, is away with sheep. His wife and children are left here alone.
Four ragged, dried-up-looking children are playing about the hou. Suddenly one of them yells: "Snake! Mother, here's a snake!"
纽扣怎么缝 The gaunt, sun-browned bushwoman dashes from the kitchen, snatches her baby from t
he ground, holds it on her left hip, and reaches for a stick.
"Where is it?"
"Here! Gone in the wood-heap;" yells the eldest boy - a sharp-faced urchin of eleven. "Stop there, mother! I'll have him. Stand back! I'll have the beggar!" 古登堡印刷术
"Tommy, come here, or you'll be bit. Come here at once when I tell you, you little wretch!"
The youngster comes reluctantly, carrying a stick bigger than himlf. Then he yells, triumphantly: 貉皮
"There it goes - under the hou!" and darts away with club uplifted. At the same time the big, black, yellow-eyed dog-of-all-breeds, who has shown the wildest interest in the proceedings, breaks his chain and rushes after that snake. He is a moment late, however, and his no reaches the crack in the slabs just as the end of its tail disappears. Almost at the same moment the boy's club comes down and skins the afores
aid no. Alligator takes small notice of this, and proceeds to undermine the building; but he is subdued after a struggle and chained up. They cannot afford to lo him.
市场失灵是指
The drover's wife makes the children stand together near the dog-hou while she watches for the snake. She gets two small dishes of milk and ts them down near the wall to tempt it to come out; but an hour goes by and it does not show itlf.
It is near sunt, and a thunderstorm is coming. The children must be brought inside. She will not take them into the hou, for she knows the snake is there, and may at any moment come up through a crack in the rough slab floor; so she carries veral armfuls of firewood into the kitchen, and then takes the children there. The kitchen has no floor - or, rather, an earthen one - called a "ground floor" in this part of the bush. There is a large, roughly-made table in the centre of the place. She brings the children in, and makes them get on this table. They are two boys and two girls - mere babies. She gives some supper, and then, before it gets dark, she goes into hou, and snatches up some pillows and bedclothes - expecting to e or lay or hand on the snake any minute. She m
akes a bed on the kitchen table for the children, and sits down beside it to watch all night.
She has an eye on the corner, and a green sapling club laid in readiness on the dresr by her side; also her wing basket and a copy of the Young Ladies' Journal. She has brought the dog into the room.
Tommy turns in, under protest, but says he'll lie awake all night and smash that blinded snake.
His mother asks him how many times she has told not to swear.
He has his club with him under the bedclothes, and Jacky protests:
"Mummy! Tommy's skinnin' me alive wif his club. Make him take it out."
懿州 Tommy: "Shet up you little ---! D'yer want to be bit with the snake?"
温馨小说 Jacky shuts up.
"If yer bit," says Tommy, after a pau, "you'll swell up, an smell, an' turn red an' green an' blue all over till yer bust. Won't he mother?"
"Now then, don't frighten the child. Go to sleep," she says.
The two younger children go to sleep, and now and then Jacky complains of being "skeezed." More room is made for him. Prently Tommy says: "Mother! Listen to them (adjective) little possums. I'd like to screw their blanky necks."
And Jacky protests drowsily.
饥荒齿轮怎么获得
"But they don't hurt us, the little blanks!"
沙鱼涌海滩 Mother: "There, I told you you'd teach Jacky to swear." But the remark makes her smile. Jacky goes to sleep.
Prently Tommy asks:
"Mother! Do you think they'll ever extricate the (adjective) kangaroo?"
"Lord! How am I to know, child? Go to sleep."
"Will you wake me if the snake comes out?"
"Yes. Go to sleep."
Near midnight. The children are all asleep and she sits there still, wing and reading by turns. From time to time she glances round the floor and wall-plate, and, whenever she hears a noi, she reaches for the stick. The thunderstorm comes on, and the wind, rushing through the cracks in the slab wall, threatens to blow out her candle. She places it on a sheltered part of the dresr and fixes up a newspaper to protect it. At every flash of lightning, the cracks between the slabs gleam like polished silver. The thunder rolls, and the rain comes down in torrents.
