原文
"Was she? Oh, I'm so sorry I wasn't in. Why didn't you call me, Marilla?
Diana and I were only over in the Haunted Wood. It's lovely in the woods
now. All the little wood things--the ferns and the satin leaves and the
crackerberries--have gone to sleep, just as if somebody had tucked them
away until spring under a blanket of leaves. I think it was a little
gray fairy with a rainbow scarf that came tiptoeing along the last
moonlight night and did it. Diana wouldn't say much about that, though.
Diana has never forgotten the scolding her mother gave her about
imagining ghosts into the Haunted Wood. It had a very bad effect on
Diana's imagination. It blighted it. Mrs. Lynde says Myrtle Bell is a
blighted being. I asked Ruby Gillis why Myrtle was blighted, and Ruby
said she guessed it was because her young man had gone back on her. Ruby
Gillis thinks of nothing but young men, and the older she gets the worse
she is. Young men are all very well in their place, but it doesn't do to
drag them into everything, does it? Diana and I are thinking seriously
of promising each other that we will never marry but be nice old maids
and live together forever. Diana hasn't quite made up her mind though,
because she thinks perhaps it would be nobler to marry some wild,
dashing, wicked young man and reform him. Diana and I talk a great deal
about serious subjects now, you know. We feel that we are so much older
than we used to be that it isn't becoming to talk of childish matters.
It's such a solemn thing to be almost fourteen, Marilla. Miss Stacy took
all us girls who are in our teens down to the brook last Wednesday, and
talked to us about it. She said we couldn't be too careful what habits
we formed and what ideals we acquired in our teens, because by the time
we were twenty our characters would be developed and the foundation laid
for our whole future life. And she said if the foundation was shaky we
could never build anything really worth while on it. Diana and I talked
the matter over coming home from school. We felt extremely solemn,
Marilla. And we decided that we would try to be very careful indeed and
form respectable habits and learn all we could and be as sensible as
possible, so that by the time we were twenty our characters would be
properly developed. It's perfectly appalling to think of being twenty,
Marilla. It sounds so fearfully old and grown up. But why was Miss Stacy
here this afternoon?"
語彙など
- fern:シダ
- satin:滑らかな,光沢のある
- satin leaf:スターアップル(学名:Chrysophyllum oliviforme）とあるが、原産が熱帯なので違うような気がします。高さは20mに達するとあるから、とってもlittle wood thingsとも言えないしね。
- crackerberry:ゴゼンタチバナ
- tuck away:しまい込む,隠す
- fairy:妖精
- rainbow:虹
- tiptoe:つま先で歩く,静かに歩く
- scolding:小言,説教
- effect:効果
- blight:だめにする
- go back on:裏切る
- drag:引き込む
- old maid:老嬢
- forever:永遠に
- make up one's mind:決心する
- dashing:威勢の良い
- wicked:性格の悪い
- reform:矯正する
- brook:小川
- foundation:基礎,基盤
- shaky不安定な
- sensible:分別がある
- appalling:ゾッとするような
- grow up:生長する