pretty, decline, regard, plenty, odour, whether, ambition, labour, reply, intend.
8. Explain and expand on the following.
1. We had taken up an oil-stove once, but “never again.”
2. Cheese, like oil, makes too much of itself.
3. My friend got rid of the cheeses by burying them on the beach.
4. I said I’d pack.
5. My tooth-brush is a thing that haunts me when I’m travelling.
6. Harris is the worst packer in this world.
7. Montmorency was in it all, of course.
8. What time shall I wake you fellows?
9. Answer the following questions.
1. Why did the friends take an awful oath never to take paraffine oil with them in a boat again?
2. What did George refuse to take for breakfast? Why?
3. What happened with the horse that carried the cheeses?
4. How did the people who travelled with the narrator behave? Why?
5. Did Tom’s wife like the cheese? Why / why not?
6. How did Tom get rid of the cheeses?
7. Was the narrator successful at packing?
8. Why does the narrator say that his tooth-brush haunts him?
9. Did George and Harris manage to do the packing? Was it easy?
10. What was Montmorency doing during the packing?
10. Retell the chapter for the persons of the narrator, Tom, Tom’s wife, George, Harris.
CHAPTER V
It was Mrs. Poppets that woke me up next morning. She said:
“Do you know that it’s nearly nine o’clock, sir?”
“Nine o’ what?” I cried, starting up.
“Nine o’clock,” she replied, through the keyhole. “I thought you were oversleeping.”
I woke Harris, and told him. He said:
“I thought you wanted to get up at six?”
“So I did,” I answered; “why didn’t you wake me?” “How could I wake you, when you didn’t wake me?” he responded. “Now we shan’t get on the water till after twelve. I wonder you take the trouble to get up at all.”
“Um,” I replied, “lucky for you that I do. If I hadn’t woken you, you’d have lain there for the whole fortnight.”
We were growling at one another for the next few minutes, when we were interrupted by a snore from George. It reminded us of his existence. There he lay – the man who had wanted to know what time he should wake us – on his back, with his mouth wide open, and his knees stuck up.
I don’t know why it should be, but the sight of another man asleep in bed when I am up, makes me mad. It seems to me so shocking to see the precious hours of a man’s life – the priceless moments that will never come back to him again – being wasted in mere brutish sleep. There was George, throwing away the inestimable gift of time. He might have been up stuffing himself with eggs and bacon or irritating the dog instead of sprawling there.
It was a terrible thought. Harris and I seemed to be struck by it at the same instant. We determined to save him, and our own dispute was forgotten. We rushed to him and pull his blanket off him, and Harris hit him with a slipper, and I shouted in his ear, and he awoke.
“Wasermarrer?55” he observed, sitting up.
“Get up, you fat-headed chunk!56” roared Harris. “It’s quarter to ten.”
“What!” he exclaimed, jumping out of bed into the bath; “Who put this thing here?”
We told him he must have been a fool not to see the bath. We finished dressing, and, when it came to the other procedures, we remembered that we had packed the tooth-brushes and the brush and comb (that toothbrush of mine will be the death of me57, I know), and we had to go downstairs, and fish them out of the bag. And when we had done that George wanted the shaving tackle. We told him that he would have to go without shaving that morning, as we weren’t going to unpack that bag again for him, nor for anyone like him.
We went downstairs to have breakfast. Montmorency had invited two other dogs to come and see him, and they were whiling away the time58 by fighting on the doorstep. We calmed them with an umbrella, and sat down to chops and cold beef.
Harris said:
“The great thing is to make a good breakfast,” and he started with a couple of chops, saying that he would take these while they were hot, as the beef could wait.
George got hold of the newspaper, and read us out the boating fatalities, and the weather forecast, which predicted “rain, cold, wet to fine59” (the worst thing that may be in weather), “occasional local thunderstorms, east wind.”
I do think that, of all the silly, irritating nonsense by which we are ill, this “weather-forecast” fraud is about the most annoying. It “forecasts” precisely what happened yesterday or the day before, and precisely the opposite of what is going to happen today.
I remember a holiday of mine being completely ruined one late autumn by our paying attention to the weather report of the local newspaper. “Heavy showers60, with thunderstorms, may be expected today,” it said on Monday, and so we gave up our picnic, and stayed indoors all day, waiting for the rain. And people would pass the house, going off in cabs and coaches as jolly and merry as could be, the sun shining out, and not a cloud to be seen.
“Ah!” we said, as we stood looking out at them through the window, “won’t they come home soaked!”
And we chuckled to think how wet they were going to get, and came back and made a fire, and got our books, and arranged our collection of seaweed and shells. By twelve o’clock, with the sun pouring into the room, the heat became quite oppressive, and we wondered when those heavy showers and occasional thunderstorms were going to begin.
“Ah! They’ll come in the afternoon, you’ll find,” we said to each other. “Oh, won’t those people get wet. What a lark!61”
At one o’clock, the landlady came in to ask if we weren’t going out, as it seemed such a lovely day.
“No, no,” we replied, with a knowing chuckle, “not we. We don’t mean to get wet – no, no.”
And when the afternoon was nearly gone, and still there was no sign of rain, we tried to cheer ourselves up with the idea that it would come down all at once, just as the people had started for home, and were out of the reach of any shelter62, and that they would thus get more soaked than ever. But not a drop ever fell, and it finished a grand day, and a lovely night after it.
The next morning we read that it was going to be a “warm, fine day; much heat;” and we put light clothing on, and went out, and, half-an-hour after we had started, it began raining hard, and an extremely cold wind sprang up, and both would keep on steadily for the whole day, and we came home with colds and rheumatism all over us, and went to bed.
The weather is a thing that is beyond me63 altogether. I never can understand it. The barometer is useless: it is as misleading