赤毛のアンの原文を少しずつ、ほぼ週一ペースで読んでいます。
今回は70回目。
チャプター5の14段落(途中まで)のみです。
【前回までのおさらい】
マシューとマリラの兄妹はファームの手伝いのため孤児の男の子を迎え入れることにしました。
しかしやって来たのは赤毛の三つ編みにそばかすの女の子!
マリラはアンを要らないと言いますが、マシューは引き取りたいと思いました。
翌朝、マリラはアンと一緒にスペンサー夫人に何とかしてもらいに出掛けました。
馬車の上でマリラはアンのことを尋ねました。
「父は高校教師でウォルター、母はバーサよ。
変な名前じゃなくて良かったわ」
というアンに、
「ちゃんとしてれば名前はどうでも良いわ」と返すマリラでした。
【本文】
“Well, I don’t know.” Anne looked thoughtful. “I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I’ve never been able to believe it. I don’t believe a rose would be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage. I suppose my father could have been a good man even if he had been called Jedediah; but I’m sure it would have been a cross. Well, my mother was a teacher in the High School, too, but when she married father she gave up teaching, of course. A husband was enough responsibility. Mrs. Thomas said that they were a pair of babies and as poor as church mice. They went to live in a weeny-teeny little yellow house in Bolingbroke. I’ve never seen that house, but I’ve imagined it thousands of times. I think it must have had honeysuckle over the parlor window and lilacs in the front yard and lilies of the valley just inside the gate. Yes, and muslin curtains in all the windows. Muslin curtains give a house such an air. I was born in that house. Mrs. Thomas said I was the homeliest baby she ever saw, I was so scrawny and tiny and nothing but eyes, but that mother thought I was perfectly beautiful. I should think a mother would be a better judge than a poor woman who came in to scrub, wouldn’t you?
The Project Gutenberg eBookより
詳しい語彙説明はnoteをご覧ください。
https://note.com/kobachism/n/ne63e1344a474
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