Get there they did, however, in due season. Mrs. Spencer lived in a big yellow house at White Sands Cove, and she came to the door with surprise and welcome mingled on her benevolent face.
“Dear, dear,” she exclaimed, “you’re the last folks I was looking for today, but I’m real glad to see you. You’ll put your horse in? And how are you, Anne?”
“I’m as well as can be expected, thank you,” said Anne smilelessly. A blight seemed to have descended on her.
“I suppose we’ll stay a little while to rest the mare,” said Marilla, “but I promised Matthew I’d be home early. The fact is, Mrs. Spencer, there’s been a queer mistake somewhere, and I’ve come over to see where it is. We send word, Matthew and I, for you to bring us a boy from the asylum. We told your brother Robert to tell you we wanted a boy ten or eleven years old.”
“Marilla Cuthbert, you don’t say so!” said Mrs. Spencer in distress. “Why, Robert sent word down by his daughter Nancy and she said you wanted a girl—didn’t she Flora Jane?” appealing to her daughter who had come out to the steps.
“She certainly did, Miss Cuthbert,” corroborated Flora Jane earnestly.
“I’m dreadful sorry,” said Mrs. Spencer. “It’s too bad; but it certainly wasn’t my fault, you see, Miss Cuthbert. I did the best I could and I thought I was following your instructions. Nancy is a terrible flighty thing. I’ve often had to scold her well for her heedlessness.”
“It was our own fault,” said Marilla resignedly. “We should have come to you ourselves and not left an important message to be passed along by word of mouth in that fashion. Anyhow, the mistake has been made and the only thing to do is to set it right. Can we send the child back to the asylum? I suppose they’ll take her back, won’t they?”
“I suppose so,” said Mrs. Spencer thoughtfully, “but I don’t think it will be necessary to send her back. Mrs. Peter Blewett was up here yesterday, and she was saying to me how much she wished she’d sent by me for a little girl to help her. Mrs. Peter has a large family, you know, and she finds it hard to get help. Anne will be the very girl for you. I call it positively providential.”
Marilla did not look as if she thought Providence had much to do with the matter. Here was an unexpectedly good chance to get this unwelcome orphan off her hands, and she did not even feel grateful for it.
She knew Mrs. Peter Blewett only by sight as a small, shrewish-faced woman without an ounce of superfluous flesh on her bones. But she had heard of her. “A terrible worker and driver,” Mrs. Peter was said to be; and discharged servant girls told fearsome tales of her temper and stinginess, and her family of pert, quarrelsome children. Marilla felt a qualm of conscience at the thought of handing Anne over to her tender mercies.
“Well, I’ll go in and we’ll talk the matter over,” she said.
“And if there isn’t Mrs. Peter coming up the lane this blessed minute!” exclaimed Mrs. Spencer, bustling her guests through the hall into the parlor, where a deadly chill struck on them as if the air had been strained so long through dark green, closely drawn blinds that it had lost every particle of warmth it had ever possessed. “That is real lucky, for we can settle the matter right away. Take the armchair, Miss Cuthbert. Anne, you sit here on the ottoman and don’t wiggle. Let me take your hats. Flora Jane, go out and put the kettle on. Good afternoon, Mrs. Blewett. We were just saying how fortunate it was you happened along. Let me introduce you two ladies. Mrs. Blewett, Miss Cuthbert. Please excuse me for just a moment. I forgot to tell Flora Jane to take the buns out of the oven.”
Mrs. Spencer whisked away, after pulling up the blinds. Anne sitting mutely on the ottoman, with her hands clasped tightly in her lap, stared at Mrs Blewett as one fascinated. Was she to be given into the keeping of this sharp-faced, sharp-eyed woman? She felt a lump coming up in her throat and her eyes smarted painfully. She was beginning to be afraid she couldn’t keep the tears back when Mrs. Spencer returned, flushed and beaming, quite capable of taking any and every difficulty, physical, mental or spiritual, into consideration and settling it out of hand.
“It seems there’s been a mistake about this little girl, Mrs. Blewett,” she said. “I was under the impression that Mr. and Miss Cuthbert wanted a little girl to adopt. I was certainly told so. But it seems it was a boy they wanted. So if you’re still of the same mind you were yesterday, I think she’ll be just the thing for you.”
Mrs. Blewett darted her eyes over Anne from head to foot.
“How old are you and what’s your name?” she demanded.
“Anne Shirley,” faltered the shrinking child, not daring to make any stipulations regarding the spelling thereof, “and I’m eleven years old.”
“Humph! You don’t look as if there was much to you. But you’re wiry. I don’t know but the wiry ones are the best after all. Well, if I take you you’ll have to be a good girl, you know—good and smart and respectful. I’ll expect you to earn your keep, and no mistake about that. Yes, I suppose I might as well take her off your hands, Miss Cuthbert. The baby’s awful fractious, and I’m clean worn out attending to him. If you like I can take her right home now.”
Marilla looked at Anne and softened at sight of the child’s pale face with its look of mute misery—the misery of a helpless little creature who finds itself once more caught in the trap from which it had escaped. Marilla felt an uncomfortable conviction that, if she denied the appeal of that look, it would haunt her to her dying day. More-over, she did not fancy Mrs. Blewett. To hand a sensitive, “highstrung” child over to such a woman! No, she could not take the responsibility of doing that!
“Well, I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I didn’t say that Matthew and I had absolutely decided that we wouldn’t keep her. In fact I may say that Matthew is disposed to keep her. I just came over to find out how the mistake had occurred. I think I’d better take her home again and talk it over with Matthew. I feel that I oughtn’t to decide on anything without consulting him. If we make up our mind not to keep her we’ll bring or send her over to you tomorrow night. If we don’t you may know that she is going to stay with us. Will that suit you, Mrs. Blewett?”
“I suppose it’ll have to,” said Mrs. Blewett ungraciously.
During Marilla’s speech a sunrise had been dawning on Anne’s face. First the look of despair faded out; then came a faint flush of hope; here eyes grew deep and bright as morning stars. The child was quite transfigured; and, a moment later, when Mrs. Spencer and Mrs. Blewett went out in quest of a recipe the latter had come to borrow she sprang up and flew across the room to Marilla.
“Oh, Miss Cuthbert, did you really say that perhaps you would let me stay at Green Gables?” she said, in a breathless whisper, as if speaking aloud might shatter the glorious possibility. “Did you really say it? Or did I only imagine that you did?”
“I think you’d better learn to control that imagination of yours, Anne, if you can’t distinguish between what is real and what isn’t,” said Marilla crossly. “Yes, you did hear me say just that and no more. It isn’t decided yet and perhaps we will conclude to let Mrs. Blewett take you after all. She certainly needs you much more than I do.”
“I’d rather go back to the asylum than go to live with her,” said Anne passionately. “She looks exactly like a—like a gimlet.”
Marilla smothered a smile under the conviction that Anne must be reproved for such a speech.
“A little girl like you should be ashamed of talking so about a lady and a stranger,” she said severely. “Go back and sit down quietly and hold your tongue and behave as a good girl should.”
“I’ll try to do and be anything you want me, if you’ll only keep me,” said Anne, returning meekly to her ottoman.
When they arrived back at Green Gables that evening Matthew met them in the lane. Marilla from afar had noted him prowling along it and guessed his motive. She was prepared for the relief she read in his face when he saw that she had at least brought back Anne back with her. But she said nothing, to him, relative to the affair, until they were both out in the yard behind the barn milking the cows. Then she briefly told him Anne’s history and the result of the interview with Mrs. Spencer.
“I wouldn’t give a dog I liked to that Blewett woman,” said Matthew with unusual vim.
“I don’t fancy her style myself,” admitted Marilla, “but it’s that or keeping her ourselves, Matthew. And since you seem to want her, I suppose I’m willing—or have to be. I’ve been thinking over the idea until I’ve got kind of used to it. It seems a sort of duty. I’ve never brought up a child, especially a girl, and I dare say I’ll make a terrible mess of it. But I’ll do my best. So far as I’m concerned, Matthew, she may stay.”
Matthew’s shy face was a glow of delight.
“Well now, I reckoned you’d come to see it in that light, Marilla,” he said. “She’s such an interesting little thing.”
“It’d be more to the point if you could say she was a useful little thing,” retorted Marilla, “but I’ll make it my business to see she’s trained to be that. And mind, Matthew, you’re not to go interfering with my methods. Perhaps an old maid doesn’t know much about bringing up a child, but I guess she knows more than an old bachelor. So you just leave me to manage her. When I fail it’ll be time enough to put your oar in.”
“There, there, Marilla, you can have your own way,” said Matthew reassuringly. “Only be as good and kind to her as you can without spoiling her. I kind of think she’s one of the sort you can do anything with if you only get her to love you.”
Marilla sniffed, to express her contempt for Matthew’s opinions concerning anything feminine, and walked off to the dairy with the pails.
“I won’t tell her tonight that she can stay,” she reflected, as she strained the milk into the creamers. “She’d be so excited that she wouldn’t sleep a wink. Marilla Cuthbert, you’re fairly in for it. Did you ever suppose you’d see the day when you’d be adopting an orphan girl? It’s surprising enough; but not so surprising as that Matthew should be at the bottom of it, him that always seemed to have such a mortal dread of little girls. Anyhow, we’ve decided on the experiment and goodness only knows what will come of it.”
背景介绍和作者简介
这段摘录出自《绿山墙的安妮》，这是一部由加拿大作家露西·莫德·蒙哥马利创作的经典小说，于1908年首次出版。故事发生在加拿大爱德华王子岛虚构的埃文利村，讲述了安妮·雪莉的冒险经历，她是一个富有想象力和活力的孤儿女孩，被误送到玛丽拉和马修·卡斯伯特那里，这对兄妹原本打算收养一个男孩来帮助他们的农场。
露西·莫德·蒙哥马利创作这部深受喜爱的小说，灵感来自于她自己的童年和爱德华王子岛的自然美景。她生动的描写和丰富的人物塑造使《绿山墙的安妮》成为一部被世界各地读者珍视的永恒之作。
详细解读和意义
这段文字捕捉了故事中的一个关键时刻，卡斯伯特一家发现了收养请求中的错误，并第一次见到了安妮。它突出了误解、意想不到的挑战以及一段变革性关系的开端等主题。玛丽拉最初的犹豫和安妮的脆弱为贯穿小说始终的成长和相互理解奠定了基础。
这个故事探讨了家庭、归属感和接纳的重要性。安妮富有想象力的精神和韧性，尽管她过去的生活很艰难，但依然闪耀着光芒，而卡斯伯特一家逐渐接受她，也反映了爱和耐心的力量。
给学生的启示和见解
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拥抱意想不到的事情： 生活常常会带来惊喜和错误，就像这个故事中的误会一样。学会适应并在意想不到的情况下找到美好是一种宝贵的技能。
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同情心和理解： 玛丽拉在送走安妮和留下安妮之间的内心挣扎，教会读者同情心以及超越第一印象的重要性。
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韧性和希望： 安妮即使在逆境中也充满希望的反应，展现了积极态度的力量和希望的力量。
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沟通很重要： 混淆部分是由于沟通不畅造成的。这提醒学生在互动中要清晰、直接，以避免误解。
在日常生活中应用
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在学校： 当学生们面临意想不到的挑战或变化时，他们可以记住安妮的韧性并保持积极。他们还可以与老师和同学进行清晰的沟通。
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在社交场合： 像玛丽拉最终做的那样，对新朋友或与众不同的人表现出友善，有助于建立包容性的友谊和社区。
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在家里： 理解家人的感受，即使在困难的情况下也要有耐心，这可以加强家庭纽带。
从故事中培养积极的品质
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想象力和创造力： 安妮生动的想象力是快乐和力量的源泉。应该鼓励学生通过阅读、写作和艺术活动来培养他们的创造力。
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善良和耐心： 玛丽拉最终接受安妮表明，耐心和善良可以改善人际关系。培养这些品质有助于结交和维持朋友。
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责任感和成长： 安妮承诺“你想让我做什么都可以”，这反映了她愿意成长和学习。学生们可以采用这种心态来提高自己并迎接挑战。
反思和欣赏
《绿山墙的安妮》不仅仅是一个关于孤儿女孩的故事；它歌颂了人类精神、成长以及生活可能带来的意想不到的快乐。阅读这段文字的学生可以欣赏到安妮和卡斯伯特一家的角色深度和情感旅程。它鼓励读者超越外表，拥抱变化，并相信新的开始的可能性。
通过参与这个故事，学生们不仅可以欣赏一个丰富的故事，还可以深入了解同情心、韧性以及家庭和友谊的价值——这些是他们个人发展和社会交往必不可少的课程。
