100个儿童英语小故事: Little Ida's Flowers 小伊达的花

 

018 Little Ida's Flowers

A long time ago, there was a kid named 'Ida'. She liked flowers very much. One day, her flowers were all faded away. "My flowers are all dry and dead. What happened to them?" Ida asked a man sitting right next to her. 

"The flowers went to a ball last night. That's why they are hanging their heads down." Ida felt strange to hear what he said. "How can flowers dance? I thought they could not dance."

"Late at night, flowers dance and run around from place to place. That castle over there is the place of the party." He kept talking. "If you go to the castle, you can see the flowers. Go to your garden and tell the flowers quietly that they have a party tonight. Then, one flower will tell the news to the others."

"How can the flowers speak?" Her curiosity grew bigger. "Flowers give and receive their messages through their body language. Have you seen the flowers shake their leaves when the wind blows?" "Wow, that's really interesting."

Then, a legal expert with no sense of humor listened to the conversation between the man and Ida. "You tell those unreasonable¹ and fake² stories to a little kid? Tusk³, tusk!" Ida brought the flowers to her room. "Take a rest before the party begins."

Ida laid down the flowers and covered them with a blanket. After a while, the sound of a piano came out of her room. Ida went into the room. 

The moonlight was bright, and the flowers were dancing to the melody⁴. They danced with a teddy bear and the flowers asked the teddy bear. "We do not live very long. After dawn, we are all going to die. Would you bury us next to the grave of the canary? Then, we will wake up in summer again."

At that moment, the door opened, and the very beautiful flowers came into the room dancing. Ida thought to herself, 'They are so beautiful! They must be from the castle. 'Two roses with crowns and other flowers exchanged greetings and danced. After a while, they said good-bye to each other.

The next morning, Ida thought, "I have to make sure that the flowers are still laying down. Well, they are still there. Only they look more depressed⁵ than yesterday." Ida talked to her teddy bear. "Do you remember the message the flowers want you to give me?" The Teddy bear kept silent. "You are very bad. You even danced with those flowers, but you forgot the flowers' favor?"

Ida came close to the dry flowers. "I will bury you in a pretty casket. Then, you will bloom in the summer beautifully, won't you?" Ida buried the flowers with her cousins. She dug a small grave and buried the flowers' casket in the ground. 

1 unreasonable   

adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的

参考例句：

• I know that they made the most unreasonable demands on you.我知道他们对你提出了最不合理的要求。
• They spend an unreasonable amount of money on clothes.他们花在衣服上的钱太多了。

2 fake   

vt.伪造，造假，假装；n.假货，赝品

参考例句：

• He can tell a fake from the original.他能分辨出赝品和真品。
• You can easily fake up an excuse to avoid going out with him.你可以很容易地编造一个借口而不与他一同外出。

3 tusk   

n.獠牙，长牙，象牙

参考例句：

• The wild boar had its tusk sunk deeply into a tree and howled desperately.野猪的獠牙陷在了树里，绝望地嗥叫着。
• A huge tusk decorated the wall of his study.他书房的墙上装饰着一支巨大的象牙。

4 melody   

n.旋律，曲调，悦耳的音乐

参考例句：

• She struck up a folk melody on the piano.她开始用钢琴演奏那首民歌。
• After she wrote the melody,she asked us for criticisms.她做好曲之后，请我们提意见。

5 depressed   

adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的

参考例句：

• When he was depressed,he felt utterly divorced from reality.他心情沮丧时就感到完全脱离了现实。
• His mother was depressed by the sad news.这个坏消息使他的母亲意志消沉。