原文
"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? I'm glad she
was satisfied with me anyhow, I would feel so sad if I thought I was a
disappointment to her--because she didn't live very long after that, you
see. She died of fever when I was just three months old. I do wish she'd
lived long enough for me to remember calling her mother. I think it
would be so sweet to say 'mother,' don't you? And father died four days
afterwards from fever too. That left me an orphan and folks were at
their wits' end, so Mrs. Thomas said, what to do with me. You see,
nobody wanted me even then. It seems to be my fate. Father and mother
had both come from places far away and it was well known they hadn't any
relatives living. Finally Mrs. Thomas said she'd take me, though she was
poor and had a drunken husband. She brought me up by hand. Do you know
if there is anything in being brought up by hand that ought to make
people who are brought up that way better than other people? Because
whenever I was naughty Mrs. Thomas would ask me how I could be such a
bad girl when she had brought me up by hand--reproachful-like.
語彙など
- thistle:アザミ
- skunk cabbage:ザゼンソウ,ミズバショウ
- cross:苦悩,苦痛
- teeny-weeny:小さな
- Bolingbroke:ボーリングブローク,ボリングブルック
- honeysuckle:ハニーサックル,スイカズラ
- parlor:応接室,居間
- lilac:リラ
- muslin:(綿)モスリン,白の薄い平織り綿布
- air:雰囲気
- homely:器量の悪い,不器量な
- scrawny:ガリガリにやせこけた,骨張った
- tiny:ちっぽけな
- scrub:ゴシゴシ磨く,こする
- fever:発熱,熱
- orphan:孤児
- be at one's wits' end:途方に暮れる,往生する
- fate:運命
- relative:身内,親戚
- drunken husband:飲んだくれの亭主
- bring up a baby by hand:赤ちゃんを(母乳でなく)ミルクで育てる
- naughty:いたずらな,言うことを聞かない
- reproachful:叱るような