Betty Stoggs Baby的故事

Betty Stoggs Baby的故事

    On her seventeenth birthday, Betty Stoggs was up with the sun. Without wasting a minute of that day, she sat down and began peeling apples.
    She wasn't peeling them to help her old mam.
    She wasn't peeling them to eat, either, although more went into her mouth than into the saucepan.
    Betty was trying to cut an all-in-one-piece apple peeling. She wasn't very handy with a knife, so it took thirteen apples and two nicked fingers before she got what she wanted. And then, what did she do with the apple peel but toss it away! But not just anywhere. Betty Stoggs closed her eyes and threw the peeling over her right shoulder, calling:
    "Apple tree! Apple tree! Show my true love's name to me!"
    When she turned round, there on the hearth lay the apple peel, curled nicely into a large and perfect J.
    Betty clapped her hands in delight, although she took care to put the knife down first. If the paring told her fortune true, then surely Betty must marry a man whose name began with J.
    "For I'm that old now," said Betty, "that I'll be needing a husband so's I can live happily ever after."
    Betty counted up all the J's she knew on those fingers that weren't too scratched.
    "There's Jacky over at Lelant -- but he's as old and shriveled as a winter apple hisself. Then there's John -- but Nan's already spoke for him. And Jim and Josiah the twins." Betty giggled. "Together they add to eighteen, but separate each one's only nine years old. I've no wish to wait for either to grow up. Jan the miner! Now there's one not too old nor too young. And not spoke for by any. It's Big Jan who'll be the husband of my very own."
    So Betty Stoggs set her cap for the miner known as Big Jan. Since she was pretty and rosy as an apple herself, in no time at all the banns were called in church and they were wed. Betty Stoggs nearly always got what she wanted.
    Big Jan was a tin-streamer and went down each day in the mine. This left Betty at home with his old mother. That woman had the wits of a witch when it came to thinking up chores for Betty to do. It was "Lend a hand here with the knitting, now" or "Brew a dish of tea, child" all the day through. This was not what Betty Stoggs had set her heart upon. Not at all. So she put a scowl on her forehead and let a tear come into her eye. It upset Big Jan to see her so.
    "What's to be done to please ye, Betty?" asked he. "Tell me and I'll do it."
    "It's my own cottage I need to make me happy. All by its own and of my own," she said.
    "Well, if that's what'll please ye."
    So, when Jan was not working down in the mine, he was working on building a house, and by the year's end there was as nice a little cottage as ever you saw. It was set off all by itself at the edge of a moor in a place called Towednack.
    When she saw it, Betty wiped away her scowl and clapped her hands with delight. And Jan picked her up and carried her over the threshold. For a bride must always be carried over the threshold of her new home, lest she stumble and bring bad luck.
    There was nothing but good luck round that cottage for a while. Betty played at keeping house and whistled more cheerfully than the kettle on the hearth. Each morning Jan went off to the mine and she had the day to herself. Or what was left of it. For Betty took to lying abed, not bothering to get up and give Jan his breakfast, nor even pack him his noon bite. Indeed, sometimes it was already after noon before she got up. But Big Jan did not complain, for if Betty was happy, then so was he.
    But by and by the little cottage did not look so new and neat. There were cobwebs strung from beam to rafter and dust balls in all the corners. The windows were so dirty that even the sunbeams were shut out. Betty Stoggs was not so sunny, either.
    "It's fine for ye," she said to Jan, "down in the mine with others about. But I must sit here alone in a house as glum as a grave."
    "Perhaps if ye swept it a bit -- "
    "Only witches need brooms," retorted Betty, and she put her mouth in a pout. "It's some company I'm needing."
    "Well, if that's what'll please ye."
    The very next evening when Jan came home he carried his pick and shovel and something else besides. The something was a small kitten, as black as the leek pie that was at that moment burning on the hearth (for Betty had quite forgotten to turn it).
    "Ah!" cried Betty when she spied the cat. "It's a tabby for my very own!" She clapped her hands with delight and wiped away the

[1] [2] [3] 下一页