The Standard of Living陶泥作品
Dorothy Parker
Annabel and Midge had been best friends almost from the day that Midge had found a job as stenographer（速记员） with the firm that employed Annabel. By now, Annabel, two years longer in the stenographic department, had worked up to the wages of eighteen dollars and fifty cents a week; Midge was still at sixteen dollars. Each girl lived at home with her family and paid half her salary to its support.
The girls sat side by side at their desks, they lunched together every noon, together they t out for home at the end of the day's work. Many of their evenings and most of their Sundays were pasd in each other's company. Often they were joined by two young men, but there was no steadiness to any such quartet; the two young men would give place, unlamented, to two other young men, and lament（悲恸） would have been inappropriate, really since the newcomers were scarcely distinguishable form their predecessors（前辈）. 快餐的英文Invariably（总是） the girls spent the fine idle hours of their hot-weather Saturday afternoo
ns together. Constant u had not worn ragged（衣衫褴褛的） the fabric of their friendship.鸡肉粉
They looked alike, though the remblance（相似） did not lie in their features. It was in their movements, their style, and their adornments（装饰）.
Always the girls went to walk on Fifth Avenue on their free afternoons, for it was the ideal ground for their favorite game. The game could be played anywhere, and indeed, was, but the great shop windows stimulated the two players to their best form.
Annabel had invented the game; or rather she had evolved it from an old one. Basically, it was no more than the ancient sport of what-would-you-do-if-you-had-a-million-dollars? But Annabel had drawn a new t of rules for it, had narrowed it, pointed it, made it stricter. Like all games, it was the more absorbing for being more difficult.
Annabel's version went like this: You must suppo that somebody dies and leaves you a million dollars, cool. But there is a condition to the bequest. It is stated in the will that you must spend every nickel（镍） of the money on yourlf.
There lay the hazard（危害） of the game. If, when playing it, you forgot and listed among your expenditures（花费） the rental of a new apartment for your family, for example, you lost your turn to the other player. It was astonishing how many--and some of them among the experts, too--would forfeit（被没收） all their winnings by such slips.拿的成语
It was esntial, of cour, that it be played in passionate riousness. Each purcha must be carefully considered and, if necessary, supported by argument. There was no zest（热情） to playing it wildly. Midge played the game like a master from the moment she learned it. It was she who added the touches that made the whole thing cozier（舒适）. According to Midge's innovations, the eccentric（古怪的） who died and left you the money was not anybody you loved, or, for the matter of that, anybody you even knew. It was somebody who had en you somewhere and had thought, "That girl ought to have lots of nice things. I'm going to leave her a million dollars when i die." And the death was to be neither untimely nor painful. Your 尊老敬贤benefactor（捐助者，恩人）, full of years and comfortably ready to depart, was to slip softly away during sleep and go right to heaven. The embroideries（刺绣，润饰） permitted Annabel and Midge to play their g
ame in the luxury of peaceful consciences.
Midge played with a riousness that wasp（易动怒的人） not only proper but extreme. The single strain on the girls' friendship had followed an announcement once made by Annabel that the first thing she would buy with her million dollars would be a silver-fox coat. It was as if she had struck Midge across the mouth. When Midge recovered her breath, she cried that she couldn't imagine how Annabel could do such a thing--silver-fox coats were so common! Annabel defended her taste with the 朗读者主题retort宝宝满月祝福语（反驳） that they were not common, either. Midge then said that they were so. She added that everybody had a silver-fox coat. She went on, with perhaps a slight toss（辗转） of head, to declare that she herlf wouldn't be caught dead in silver fox.
For the next few days, though the girls saw each other as constantly, their conversation was careful and infrequent, and they did not once play their game. Then one morning, as soon as Annabel entered the office, she came to Midge and said she had changed her mind. She would not buy a silver-fox coat with any part of her million dollars. Immediately on receiving the legacy（遗产）, she would lect a coat of mink（水貂）.
Midge smiled and her eyes shone. "I think," she said, "you're doing absolutely the right thing."
Now, as they walked along Fifth Avenue, they played the game anew. It was one of tho days with which September is repeatedly curd; hot and glaring, with slivers of dust in the wind. People drooped（低垂，发蔫） and shambled（蹒跚而行）, but the girls carried themlves tall and walked a straight line, as befitted young heiress（继承人） on their afternoon promenade（散步）. There was no longer need for them to start the game at its formal opening. Annabel went directly to the heart of it.
"All right," she said. "So you've got this million dollars. So what would be the first thing you'd do?"
新加坡英语"Well, the first thing I'd do," Midge said, "I'd get a mink coat." But she said it mechanically, as if she were giving the memorized answer to an expected question.
