原文
"Tomorrow. I'm glad she's coming--but it will be another change. Marilla
and I cleared everything out of the spare room yesterday. Do you know,
I hated to do it? Of course, it was silly--but it did seem as if we
were committing sacrilege. That old spare room has always seemed like
a shrine to me. When I was a child I thought it the most wonderful
apartment in the world. You remember what a consuming desire I had to
sleep in a spare room bed--but not the Green Gables spare room. Oh, no,
never there! It would have been too terrible--I couldn't have slept a
wink from awe. I never WALKED through that room when Marilla sent me in
on an errand--no, indeed, I tiptoed through it and held my breath, as if
I were in church, and felt relieved when I got out of it. The pictures
of George Whitefield and the Duke of Wellington hung there, one on each
side of the mirror, and frowned so sternly at me all the time I was in,
especially if I dared peep in the mirror, which was the only one in the
house that didn't twist my face a little. I always wondered how Marilla
dared houseclean that room. And now it's not only cleaned but stripped
bare. George Whitefield and the Duke have been relegated to the upstairs
hall. 'So passes the glory of this world,'" concluded Anne, with a
laugh in which there was a little note of regret. It is never pleasant
to have our old shrines desecrated, even when we have outgrown them.
語彙など
- clear:片付ける
- spare room:客間,予備室
- silly:ばかばかしい
- sacrilege:神を冒涜すること,神聖冒涜
- shrine:聖地
- apartment:共同住宅の各区画
- consuming:激烈な
- desire:願望
- awe:畏怖
- errand:用事
- tiptoe:つま先で歩く
- hold one's breath:息を殺す
- George Whitefield:イングランド国教会の牧師
- Duke of Wellington:初代ウェリントン公爵アーサー・ウェルズリー元帥(イギリスの軍人、政治家、貴族)
- frown:顔をしかめる
- peep in:内をのぞく
- twist:ひねる
- strip:裸にする
- relegate:追いやる
- note:声の調子,響き
- regret:後悔
- desecrate:神聖を汚す
- outgrow:成長して脱する