牛肉丸子The Catbird Seat泛滥的近义词
James Thurber
青衫老祖
Mr Martin bought the pack of Camels on Monday night in the most crowded cigar store on Broadway. It was theatre time and ven or eight men were buying cigarettes. The clerk didn’t even glance at Mr Martin, who put the pack in his overcoat pocket and went out. If any of the staff at F. & S. had en him buy the cigarettes, they would have been astonished, for it was generally known that Mr Martin did not smoke, and never had. No one saw him.
It was just a week to the day since Mr Martin had decided to rub out Mrs ‘Ulgine Barrows. The term ‘rub out’ plead him becau it suggested nothing more than the correction of an error—in this ca an error of Mr Fitweiler. Mr Martin had spent each night of the past week working out his plan and examining it. As he walked home now he went over it again. For the hundredth time he rented the element of imprecision, the margin of guesswork that entered into the business. The project as he had worked it out was casual and bold, the risk
马休斯s were considerable. Something might go wrong anywhere along the line. And therein lay the cunning of his scheme. No one would ever e in it the cautious, painstaking hand of Erwin Martin, head of the filing department at F. & S., of whom Mr Fitweiler had once said, ‘Man is fallible but Martin isn’t.’ No one would e his hand, that is, unless it were caught in the act.
Sitting in his apartment, drinking a glass of milk, Mr Martin reviewed his ca against Mrs Ulgine Barrows, as he had every night for ven nights. He began at the beginning. Her quacking voice and braying laugh had first profaned the halls of F. & S. on 7 March 1941 (Mr Martin had a head for dates). Old Roberts, the personnel chief, had introduced her as the newly appointed special advir to the president of the firm, Mr Fitweiler. The woman had appalled Mr Martin instantly, but he hadn’t shown it. He had given her his dry hand, a look of studious concentration, and a faint smile.
理财分析师‘Well,’ she had said, looking at the papers on his desk, ‘are you lifting the oxcart out of the ditch?’
As Mr Martin recalled that moment, over his milk, he squirmed slightly. He must keep his mind on her crimes as a special advir, not on her peccadillos as a personality. This he found difficult to do, in spite of entering an objection and sustaining it. The faults of the woman as a woman kept chattering on in his mind like an unruly witness. She had, for almost two years now, baited him. In the halls, in the elevator, even in his own office, into which she romped now and then like a circus hor, she was constantly shouting the silly questions at him. ‘Are you lifting the oxcart out of the ditch? Are you tearing up the pea patch? Are you hollering down the rain barrel? Are you scraping around the bottom of the pickle barrel? Are you sitting in the catbird at?’
It was Joey Hart, one of Mr Martin’s two assistants, who had explained what the gibberish meant. ‘She must be a Dodger fan,’ he had said. ‘Red Barber announces the Dodger games over the radio and he us tho expressions—picked ‘em up down South.’
Joey had gone on to explain one or two. ‘Tearing up the pea patch’ meant going on a rampage; ‘sitting in the catbird at’ meant sitting pretty, like a batter with three balls and no strikes on him.
Mr Martin dismisd all this with an effort. It had been annoying, it had driven him near to distraction, but he was too solid a man to be moved to murder by anything so childish. It was fortunate, he reflected as he pasd on to the important charges against Mrs Barrows, that he had stood up under it so well. He had maintained always an outward appearance of polite tolerance. ‘Why, I even believe you like the woman,’ Miss Paird, his other assistant, had once said to him. He had simply smiled.
A gavel rapped in Mr Martin’s mind and the ca proper was resumed. Mrs Ulgine Barrows stood charged with wilful, blatant and persistent attempts to destroy the efficiency and system of F. & S. It was competent, material and relevant to review her advent and ri to power. Mr Martin had got the story from Miss Paird, who emed always able to find things out. According to her, Mrs Barrows had met Mr Fitweiler at a party, where she had rescued him from the embraces of a powerfully built drunken man who had mistaken the president of F. & S. for a famous retired Middle Western football coach. She had led him to a sofa and somehow worked upon him a monstrous magic. The ageing gentleman had jumped to the conclusion there and then that this was a woma
才有梅花便不同n of singular attainments, equipped to bring out the best in him and in the firm. A week later he had introduced her into F. & S. as his special advir. On that day confusion got its foot in the door. After Miss Tyson, Mr Brundage and Mr Bartlett had been fired and Mr Munson had taken his hat and stalked out, mailing in his resignation later, old Roberts had been emboldened to speak to Mr Fitweiler. He mentioned that Mr Munson’s department had been ‘a little disrupted’ and hadn’t they perhaps better resume the old system there? Mr Fitweiler had said certainly not. He had the greatest faith in Mrs Barrows’ ideas.
60公分
‘They require a little asoning, a little asoning, is all,’ he had added. Mr Roberts had given it up. Mr Martin reviewed in detail all the changes wrought by Mrs Barrows. She had begun chipping at the cornices of the firm’s edifice and now she was swinging at the foundation stones with a pickaxe.
Mr Martin came now, in his summing up, to the afternoon of Monday, 2 November 1942—just one week ago. On that day, at , Mrs Barrows had bounced into his office. ‘Boo!’
she had yelled. ‘Are you scraping around the bottom of the pickle barrel?’ Mr Martin had looked at her from under his green eyeshade, saying nothing. She had begun to wander about the office, taking it in with her great, popping eyes. ‘Do you really need all the filing cabinets?’ she had demanded suddenly.
人心不足蛇吞象Mr Martin’s heart had jumped. ‘Each of the files,’ he had said, keeping his voice evén, ‘plays an indispensable part in the system of F. & S.’
