【儿童英文读物】The Story My Doggie Told to Me.docx

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1、【儿童英文读物】The Story My Doggie Told to MePART ONE CHAPTER I PLAY DAYS Bow! I always begin a story that way. It is what you Two-Legged Folks call “making your bow.” With us dogs it means “Hello” and “How do you do” and “Good morning” andand lots of other things too. And sometimes it means “Look out!” Yo

2、u see, we have so many ways of saying it! Perhaps some day Ill tell you how to know just what we mean when we say “Bow!”like thatsort of quick and friendly; and what we mean when we say it slow and gruff, way down in our throats. And then theres “Wow!” too. “Wow” is different from “Bow.” And “Bow-wo

3、w” is still different. But this isnt telling my story, is it? Of course, you havent said you wanted me to tell you my story, but Im almost sure you do. I think youll like it, because I am a very good story-tellerfor a dog. And, although I am not quite three years old, I have seen a lot of things in

4、my day. You wont mind if I wag my tail now and then, will you? It is very hard for a dog to tell a tale without wagging. Some folks say a dog talks with his tail. He doesnt though; not really. He just uses his tail the way you Two-Legged Folks use your hands, to make others understand better what yo

5、u are saying. When you tell a story you should always start right at the very beginning, and that is what I am going to do. The first thing I remember was when I was about two weeks old. Im sure you cant remember when you were two weeks old. I think that is very clever of me, dont you? It shows what

6、 a fine memory I have. I was lying in a sort of cage made of criss-cross wires. There was sawdust on the floor. There were four of us in all, for I had two sisters and one brother. My mothers name was Gretchen and my fathers name was Fritz. I am named after my father. He had two or three other names

7、 besides, but theyre very hard to say, being German. You see my father and mother were both born in Germany and brought to this country when they were very young, and so, of course, they spoke German very nicely. But they never taught it to me. I suppose there wasnt time. There are so many, many thi

8、ngs a puppy has to learn. I didnt see much of my father when I was a tiny puppy. Sometimes he came to the cage where we lived and licked our noses through the wires, but he was a very busy dog and had lots of things to attend to. My mother was very beautiful, with the loveliest soft brown eyes and t

9、he longest, silkiest ears and quite the crookedest front legs you ever saw. (You see, in my family crooked front legs are much admired.) We all loved her very dearly, but I am afraid we caused her a lot of trouble. But she was very fond of us and very proud of us. Sometimes I wished she wasnt so car

10、eful about keeping us clean, for lots of times when I wanted to play with my brother and sisters I couldnt because she had to wash me all over. You see, puppies dont like being washed much more than you do; and I heard you making an awful fuss this morning! We lived very happily in the cage for seve

11、ral weeks. We ate and slept and played, but most of all we ate and slept. At first it must have been funny to see us trying to walk, for our legs were so weak that they just sprawled out under us when we wanted to use them. But it wasnt long before we could run and jump as much as we pleased. I was

12、the biggest and the strongest of us all, and I think my mother was every bit as fond of me as she was of my two sisters and my brother, but it did seem to me as if I got most of the punishment. Maybe I was the naughtiest one, too! As we grew older and stronger our mother used to leave us alone for a

13、 little while every day, and we didnt like that at all at first. We used to whine and cry and feel very lonesome until she came back. But she always did come back, and pretty soon we got to know that she would, and so we didnt mind so much. We had some lovely frolics, we puppies. We used to make bel

14、ieve that we were very cross, and tumble each other over in the sawdust and bite each others ears and legs and growl such funny little growls! A man named William looked after us. He wore leather gaiters. They tasted very well. Mother said he was a coachman. He was very kind to us and brought us thi

15、ngs to eat and water to drink and petted us a lot. Then there was another man who only came to see us a few times. We didnt like him so well. He was a Doctor and smelled of medicine. He came to see us once when my sister Freya was sick and once when I had an awful pain in my insides. That was later,

16、 though, after we were out of the cage and running around in the yard. It was when I ate the harness soap. Mother told me afterwards that it was a mistake to eat any kind of soap. I think she was right. Then, of course, there was the Master, and the Mistress, and, best of all, the Baby. She wasnt ex

17、actly a baby, because she was almost two years old, but every one called her the Baby. We all loved her very much. She used to take us up one by one and kiss us on our noses and call us “Booful dogums” and hug us. Sometimes she hugged so hard it hurt, but we never let her know it. She had golden hai

18、r and blue eyes and two little fat red cheeks and was always laughing. Her real name was Mildred. The Master was a very big man, so big that I could only see to the tops of his riding-boots when I was little. He had a very deep, gruff voice and called us “Those little rascals!” But we knew he didnt

19、mean it and we liked him. But we liked the Baby best of all, and after her the Mistress, who was the Babys mother. She was quite small for a grown-up and had such a nice voice that we loved to hear it and would all go running to the front of the cage or the yard fence when she came. The Familywe cal

20、led the Master, the Mistress and the Baby the Familylived in the country in a beautiful white house with green blinds that stood on top of a little hill and had trees and fields all around it. There was a pond, too, and a brook that ran out of it. Thats where the ducks lived. Ducks are very funny th

21、ings. Later Ill tell you something about them. There was a stable, as well, and outside the stable was a yard fenced in with wire netting, and in the corner of the yard was what they called the Kennel. That was where I was born. The yard was quite large and after we were allowed to run around in it,

22、 we had a fine time. There was so much to see from it: the house and the duck-pond and the country road, with people going by that had to be barked at, and the place where William washed the carriages when the weather was fine, and many other things. Also, there were squirrels in the trees, and bird

23、s, too. And there was Ju-Ju. CHAPTER II WHAT WE LEARNED Ju-ju was a cat. She was grey, like smoke, and had a bushy tail and long hair and yellow eyes. I dont think yellow eyes are very pretty, do you? None of us ever liked Ju-ju very much, although we soon got to respect her. She was very vain of he

24、r long hair and thick tail and used to spend hours doing nothing but washing herself. Cats are very lazy, I think, and waste too much time on themselves. Once I asked Mother what cats were for and she sighed and said she used to think they were to chase but she had changed her mind and thought now t

25、hey were just to look at. Mother had a place on her nose like a scratch where the hair never grew and sometimes Ive wondered whether Ju-ju made it. When we first got out into the yard Ju-ju used to come and jump on top of one of the fence-posts and look down at us just as though we were funny and st

26、range. That used to make us very angry and we would bark and jump at the post for the longest time. But of course we couldnt reach her and after awhile she would blink and blink at us and then go to sleep up there! Cats are very annoying. Theyre almost as bad as ducks! We were born in the Spring and

27、 lived in the yard until we were four months old. Then my brother, whose name was Franz, and one of my sisters, whose name was Franzchen, left us. They went away off to live in the city and Freya and I were quite lonely at first, and our mother felt very badly about it. But she told us that they had

28、 gone to live with some nice, kind people and would be very happy, and after that we didnt feel so badly about it. After Franz and Franzchen left us we were no longer kept in the Kennel yard, but were allowed to go anywhere we pleasedexcept the house. We werent allowed in the house, but sometimes we

29、 got in. When we did we scampered straight for the kitchen. The first time we did it Cook had a tin dish filled with cake-batter in her hand and when we ran at her and barked and jumped up on her she was so surprised and scared that she cried “Saints presarve us!” and dropped the dish. Most of the b

30、atter went on Freya and she ran out as quick as she could go, much more frightened than Cook, and I after her. We had a fine time licking the batter off. It was nice and sweet and sticky and lasted all day. Father was quite angry with us, but Mother said “Puppies will be puppies.” After that it was

31、very hard to get in the kitchen, and when we did get in Cook would drive us out with a broom. Of course we tried not to go and made believe we didnt know what she meant when she cried “Shoo!” and “Scat!” We would run under the tables and into the pantry and quite often she would have to coax us out

32、with pieces of meat or something nice. It was very exciting. If we thought she really meant to hit us with the broom we would lie on our backs with our feet in the air and pretend we were awfully frightened. Then Delia, who was the maid and a great friend of ours, would say “Oh, the poor little dear

33、s. Dont you dare hit them, Mary McGuire!” Then we would have a piece of cake each and Delia would pet us and put us outside. Father was a very busy dog and had a great many things to look after. He always went to drive with our Mistress and sat very straight and fine beside William on the front seat

34、. Then, too, he had to help William do all sorts of things, like wash the carriages and feed the chickens and ducks and cut the grass and rake the leaves. He must have been a great comfort to William. Mother had her paws full looking after us most of that summer and so she was not able to help much

35、with the work. Of course she kept watch and taught us to, and we soon learned who to bark at and who not. When the man from the butchers came Mother always made it a point to be very polite to him. She wagged her tail and sniffed his boots and followed him around to the kitchen door. He smelled very

36、 nice. Sometimes he gave us small pieces of meat and we were always glad to see him. But when a tramp or a pedlar came Mother barked and the hair stood up all along her back. We soon learned to do the same and tramps didnt very often come much farther than the gate. Of course we learned a great many

37、 other things too. Such as to stand on our hind legs and beg when we wanted anything and not get under the feet of the horses and keep away from the carriage wheels. Once a wheel went over the end of my tail and it hurt a good deal and I crawled into a stall and cried. Mother came and told me I was

38、too old to cry and that it would teach me to keep out of the way. Another thing we learned was not to jump up on the Baby. We did it because we loved her and wanted to lick her face, but she always tumbled over. That was because she only had two legs and was no fault of ours. Once when she tumbled s

39、he struck her head against something hard and cried dreadfully. We licked her face as hard as we could to comfort her, because that is what Mother always did to us when we were hurt, but it didnt seem to do her much good. Then William came running up and cuffed us pretty hard and picked Baby up. I d

40、ont think he should have punished us, but maybe he didnt understand. After that we didnt do it any more. Another thing we soon learned was to let Ju-ju alone. One day, soon after we were allowed to go where we liked, Freya and I came across Ju-ju in the kitchen yard. She was fast asleep and we thoug

41、ht it would be great fun to jump at her and bark. So we did it and she woke up awfully quick and scratched me on the nose and chased Freya half-way to the stable. Cats cant take a joke.CHAPTER III PUPPY TROUBLES We learned a good deal about what was good to eat and what wasnt, too. Once Delia left a

42、 tin pan filled with some whitish stuff on the back steps and I ate quite a lot of it before she came out and found what I was doing. When she did she cried “Cook! Cook! One of the Puppies has eaten the starch!” Of course I went right away, as I didnt want to have any trouble about it, and pretty so

43、on I felt very funny inside and crawled into a stall where it was quiet and dark. But William found me after a while and made me swallow something that didnt taste at all nice and pretty soon I felt better. I didnt think it was very kind of Delia to tell William what I had done, but maybe it was all

44、 for the best, because until he made me swallow the nasty medicine I was pretty sure I was going to die. Starch and soap taste all right but they arent good for puppies. I found that out. It seems that we all have to learn a lot of things by what Mother calls “sad experience.” Like bees. Bees look v

45、ery much like flies but theyre different. Once Freya and I saw some bees going in and out of a tiny hole in the ground back of the stable. They were very large bees and growled. We wondered why they went into the hole and so we scratched at it to find out. While we were doing it quite a lot of bees

46、came out and Freya gave a yelp and began to paw at her nose. She looked so funny that I laughed at her and asked why she did it. Then I gave a yelp and forgot all about Freya. Those bees were very angry and sat down on us wherever our hair was thin, and every time they sat down they scratched. We di

47、dnt stay there long, I can tell you! We ran as fast as we could run, but the bees flew right along with us and chased us way down to the duck-pond. By that time I had five scratches and Freya had four and they hurt a good deal and swelled up. We licked the scratches and whined and after a while we r

48、olled over in the mud at the edge of the pond and that made them feel better. But they didnt stop hurting for a long time. After that if a bee came buzz-buzzing around us we always made believe we didnt see it. But we got up very quietly and moved away. Then there are balls. Some balls are nice to p

49、lay with and chew on. They are made of rubber. William had one and he used to throw it, and Freya and I, and sometimes Mother and Father, too, would scamper after it and see who could get it and bring it back to him. If Freya got it I always took it away from her, because I am bigger and stronger than she is. Besides, shes only a girl dog! Once Freya found the ball in the harness room, where it had dropped off a shelf,