By Mary Gavell
As she grew old, she began to dream again. She had not dreamed much in her middle years; or, if she had, the busyness of her days, converging on her the moment she awoke, had pushed her dreams right out of her head, and any fragments that remained were as busy and prosaic as the day itself. She had only the one son, James, but she had also mothered her younger sister after their parents died, and she had done all of the office work during the years when her husband’s small engineering firm was getting on its feet. And Julius’s health had not been too good, even then; it was she who had mowed the lawn and had helped Jamie to learn to ride his bicycle and pitched balls to him in the backyard until he learned to hit them.
随着年龄的增长，她又开始做梦了。她在中年时很少做梦;或者，如果她有的话，她白天的忙碌在她醒来的那一刻向她涌来，把她的梦想从她的头脑中赶走了，剩下的碎片就像白天本身一样忙碌而平淡。她只有一个儿子詹姆斯，但在父母去世后，她也像母亲一样抚养了她的妹妹。在她丈夫的小工程公司刚刚成立的那些年里，所有的办公室工作都是她做的。即使在那时，朱利叶斯的健康状况也不太好;是她修剪了草坪，帮助杰米学习骑自行车，在后院向他扔球，直到他学会击球。
But she was dreaming again now, as she had when she was a child. Oh, not the lovely foolish dreams of finding oneself alone in a candy store, or the horrible dreams of being pursued through endless corridors without doors by nameless
terrors. But as her days grew in quietness and solitude – for James was grown and gone, and Julius was drawing in upon himself, becoming every day more small and chill and dim – color and life and drama were returning to her dreams.
但是她现在又在做梦了，就像她小时候那样。哦，不要做那些发现自己独自在糖果店里的可爱愚蠢的梦，也不要做那些在没有门的无尽走廊里被无名的恐怖追逐的可怕的梦。但是，随着她的日子在安静和孤独中度过——因为詹姆斯已长大成人，离世了，朱利叶斯也在自生自养，变得一天比一天渺小、寒冷和暗淡——色彩和生活和戏剧性又回到了她的梦里。
But on that first night when she heard the creak of the swing, she did not think that she was dreaming at all. She had been lying in bed quite awake, she thought, in the little room that used to be Jamie’s – for nowadays her reading in bed, and afterward her tossing and turning, disturbed Julius. The swing was not an ordinary one. Julius had put it up, in one of the few flashes of poetry in all his worrisome, hardworking life, when Jamie was only a baby and nowhere near old enough to swing in it. The ladder Julius had was not tall enough, and he had to buy a new one, for the tree was tremendous and the branch on which he proposed to hang the swing arched a full forty feet from the ground, and much thought and consideration and care were given to the chain, and the hooks, and the seat. The swing was suspended from so high, and its arc was so wide, that riding in it was like sailing through the air with the leisurely swoop of a wheeling bird. One seemed to travel from one horizon to the other. And how proud Julius had been of it when Jamie was old enough to swing in it, and the neighborhood children had stood around to admire and be given a turn, for there was no other swing like it.
但在第一天晚上，当她听到秋千的吱吱声时，她根本不认为自己是在做梦。她想，她躺在曾经属于杰米的小房间里，完全醒着——因为现在她在床上看书，后来辗转反侧，把朱利叶斯弄得心烦意乱。这秋千可不是一般的秋千。这是朱利叶斯把它挂起来的，在他烦恼而勤奋的一生中，只有少数几次闪现诗意，当时杰米还只是个婴儿，还远没有大到可以在里面荡秋千的年龄。朱利叶斯的梯子不够高，他不得不买一架新的，因为那棵树太大了，他打算挂秋千的树枝足有40英尺高，他对铁链、钩子和座位都做了很多考虑和考虑。秋千悬得那么高，弧线那么宽，坐在秋千上就像在空中航行，像一只盘旋的小鸟那样从容地俯冲下来。一个似乎从一个地平线飞到另一个地平线。当杰米大到可以在里面荡秋千的时候，朱利叶斯是多么自豪啊，邻居的孩子们都站在旁边欣赏，还被给了一个秋千，因为没有其他的秋千像这样。
The swing was hardly ever used now; it was only a treat, once in a while, for a visiting child, and occasionally when she was outside working in her flower border she would sit and rest in it for a moment or two, idling, pushing herself a little with a toe. But the rhythmic creak of the chains was so familiar that she could not mistake it, she thought. Could the wind be strong enough to move it, if it came from the right angle? She finally gave up thinking about it and went to sleep.
这秋千现在几乎不用了;对来访的孩子来说，这只是偶尔的一种享受，偶尔她在外面的花坛上干活时，会坐在花坛上休息一会儿，悠闲地坐着，用脚趾轻轻地推着自己。但是链条有节奏的咯吱声太熟悉了，她想她不会弄错的。如果风的角度合适，能刮得足够大吗?她终于不再想这件事，去睡觉了。
Nor did she think of it the next day, for they were due for Sunday dinner at James’s house. He lived in a suburb on the opposite side of the city – just the
right distance away, she often thought, far enough so that aging parents could not meddle and embarrass and interfere, but near enough so that she could see him fairly often. She loved him with all her heart, her dear, her only son. She was enormously proud of him, too; he was a highly paid mathematician in a research foundation, and expert in a field so esoteric that she had given up trying to grasp its point. But secretly she took some credit, for it was she – who had kept the engineering firm’s books balanced and done the income tax – who had played little mathematical games with him before he had ever gone to school and had sat cross-legged with him on the floor tossing coins to test the law of probability. Oh, they had had fun together in all sorts of ways; they had done crossword puzzles together, and studied the stars together, and read books together that were over his head and sometimes over hers too. And he had turned out well; he was a scholar, and a success, and a worthy citizen, and he had a pretty wife, a charming home, and two handsome children. She could not have asked for more. He was the light and the warmth of her life, and her heart beat fast on the way to his house.
第二天她也没有去想这件事，因为星期天他们要去詹姆斯家吃晚饭。他住在城市对面的郊区——她常常想，距离刚刚好，足够远，让年迈的父母不会干预、尴尬和干扰，但又足够近，让她可以经常看到他。她全心全意地爱着他，她亲爱的，她唯一的儿子。她也非常为他感到骄傲;他是一个研究基金会的高薪数学家，是一个深奥领域的专家，她已经放弃了试图抓住它的重点。但她却暗暗地把功劳揽在自己身上，因为在他上学之前，就是她——负责平衡工程公司的账本和缴纳所得税——和他玩过一些数学游戏，还和他盘腿坐在地板上扔硬币来检验概率定律。哦，他们在一起曾有过各种各样的乐趣;他们一起做填字游戏，一起研究星星，一起读他读不到的书，有时也读不到她读不到的书。结果他变得很好;他是一个学者，一个成功人士，一个值得尊敬的公民，他有一个漂亮的妻子，一个
迷人的家庭，和两个漂亮的孩子。她不能再要求更多了。他是她生命中的光明和温暖，在去他家的路上，她的心怦怦直跳。
She drove. She had always enjoyed driving, and nowadays Julius, who used to insist on doing it himself, let her do it without a word. They drove in silence mostly, but her heart was as light as the wind that blew on her face, and she hummed under her breath, for she was on her way to see James. Julius said querulously, “I could have told you you’d get into a lot of traffic this way and you’d do better to go by the river road, but I knew you wouldn’t listen, ” but she was so happy that she forbore to mention that whenever she took the river road he remarked how much longer it was, and only answered, “I expect you’re quite right, Julius. We’ll come back that way.”
她开车。她一向喜欢开车，现在朱利叶斯坚持自己开车，却让她自己开车，一句话也不说。他们大部分时间都在沉默中开车，但她的心情就像吹在脸上的风一样轻松，她低声哼着歌，因为她正要去见詹姆斯。朱利叶斯抱怨地说:“我本可以告诉你，你走这条路会遇到很多车辆，你最好走河边的路，但我知道你不会听的。”但她很高兴，她忍住不提，每当她走河边的路时，他都会说那条路要走多长时间，只是回答说:“我想你说得很对，朱利叶斯。我们就从那条路回来。”
They did go home by the river road, and it seemed very long; she was a little depressed, as she often was when she returned from James’s house. “I love him with all my heart”–the words walked unbidden into her mind–“but I wish that when I ask him how he is he wouldn’t tell me that there is every likelihood that the Basic Research Division will be merged with the Statistics Division. ”He had
kissed her on the cheek, and Anne, his wife, had kissed her on the cheek, and the two children had kissed her on the cheek, and he had slipped a footstool under her feet and had seated his father away from drafts, and they had had a fire in the magnificent stone fireplace the architect had dreamed up and the builder added to the cost, and Anne had served them an excellent dinner, and the children had, on request, told her of suitable A’s in English and Boy Scout merit badges. They had asked her how she had been, and she told them, in a burst of confidence, that she had had the ancient piano tuned and had been practicing an hour a day. They looked puzzled. “ What are you planning to do with it, Mother?” Anne asked. “Oh, well nothing, really, ”she said, embarrassed. She said later on that she had been reading books on China for she was so terribly ignorant about it, and they asked politely how her eyes were holding up, and when she said that she was sick of phlox and was going to dig it all up and try iris, James said mildly, “ You really shouldn’t do all that heavy gardening anymore, Mother.” They were loving, they were devoted, and it was the most pleasant of ordinary family Sunday afternoons. James told her that he had another salary increase, and that the paper he had delivered before the Mathematical Research Institute had been, he felt he could say without exaggeration, most well received, and that they were getting a new station wagon. But what, she wondered, did he feel, what did he love and hate, and what upset him or made him happy, and what did he look forward to? Nonsense, she thought, I can’t expect him to tell me his secret thoughts. People can’t, once they’re grown, to their parents. But the terrible fear rose in her that these were his secret thoughts, and that was all there was.
他们确实是沿着河边的路回家的，路似乎很长。她有点沮丧，就像她从詹姆斯家回来
时一样。“我全心全意地爱他”——这句话不假思索地走进了她的脑海——“但我希望当我问他怎么样时，他不要告诉我，基础研究部极有可能会和统计部合并.”他亲吻了她的面颊,安妮,他的妻子,吻了她的脸颊,和两个孩子已经吻了她的脸颊,和他滑倒在她的脚凳,坐在他父亲远离草稿,他们有火在宏伟的石头壁炉建筑师构想,构建器添加到成本,和安妮曾他们一个很好的晚餐,和孩子们,在请求,告诉她合适的英语和童子军的徽章。他们问她过得怎么样，她满怀信心地告诉他们，她已经把那架古老的钢琴调好了音，并且每天练习一小时。他们看上去很困惑。“你打算用它做什么，妈妈?””安妮问。“哦，没什么，真的，”她尴尬地说。后来她说，她一直在看有关中国的书，因为她对中国一无所知。他们礼貌地问她眼睛是怎么撑起来的，她说她讨厌夹竹桃，打算把它们都挖出来试着种虹膜，詹姆斯温和地说:“妈妈，你真的不应该再从事那些繁重的园艺工作了。“他们彼此相爱，彼此忠诚，这是普通家庭中最愉快的星期天下午。詹姆斯告诉她，他又涨了一次工资，他觉得可以毫不夸张地说，他在数学研究所之前交的那篇论文最受欢迎，他们还得到了一辆新的旅车。但是，她想知道，他感觉到什么，他爱什么，恨什么，什么使他难过或使他快乐，他期待什么?胡说八道，她想，我不能指望他告诉我他的秘密想法。人一旦长大，就不能再面对父母了。但是，她心中又产生了一种可怕的恐惧，认为这些都是他的秘密想法，而这就是全部的想法。
That night she heard the swing again, the gentle, regular creak of the chains. What can be making that noise, she wondered, for it was a still night, with surely not enough wind to stir the swing. She asked Julius the next day if he ever heard a creaking sound at night, a sound like the swing used to make. Julius peered out from his afghan and said deafly , “ Hah?” and she answered irritably, “ Oh, never mind. ” The afghan maddened her. He was always chilly nowadays, and she had knitted the afghan for him for Christmas, working on it in snatches when he was out from under foot for a bit, with a vision of its warming his knees as they sat
together in the evenings, companionably watching television, or reading, or chatting. But he sat less and less with her in the evenings; he went to bed very early nowadays, and he had taken to wearing the afghan daytimes around his shoulders like a shawl. She was sorry immediately for her irritation, and she tried to be very thoughtful of him the rest of the day. But he didn’t seem to notice; he noticed so little now.
那天晚上，她又听到了秋千的声音，轻柔而有规律的铁链的咯吱声。她想知道是什么在发出这样的声音，因为这是一个安静的夜晚，肯定没有足够的风搅动秋千。第二天，她问朱利叶斯晚上是否听到过类似秋千发出的吱吱声。朱利叶斯从毛毯里探出头来，震耳欲聋地说:“哈?她不耐烦地回答说:“哦，没关系。阿富汗人把她气疯了。如今他总是感到寒冷，她为他织了一件圣诞节用的毛毯，当他离开脚下一会儿的时候，她就把它织好，幻想着晚上他们坐在一起，一起看电视，一起读书，一起聊天时，毛毯会温暖他的膝盖。但是晚上他陪她坐着的时间越来越少了;现在他很早就上床睡觉了，而且他已经习惯把阿富汗衫像披肩一样披在肩上。她立刻为自己的愤怒感到抱歉，在这一天剩下的时间里，她尽量为他着想。但他似乎没有注意到;现在他注意不到什么了。
Other things maddened her too. She decided that she should get out more and, heartlessly abandoning Julius, she made a luncheon date with Jessie Carling, who had once been a girl as gay and scatterbrained as a kitten. Jessie spent the entire lunch discussing her digestion and the problem of making the plaids match across the front in a housecoat she was making for herself. A couple of days later, she paid a call on Joyce Simmons, who had trouble with her back and didn’t get out much, and Joyce told her in minute detail about her son, dwelling, in full circumstantial detail, on the virtues of him, his wife, and his children. She held her
tongue, though it was hard. My trouble, she thought wryly, is that I think my son is so really superior that a kind of noblesse oblige forces me not to mention it.
其他事情也让她抓狂。她决定自己应该多出去走走，于是无情地抛弃了朱利叶斯，约了杰西·卡林(Jessie Carling)共进午餐，她曾经是一个像小猫一样快乐和健忘的女孩。整个午餐时间，杰西都在讨论她的消化问题，以及她为自己做的一件家用服的格子前襟搭配问题。几天后，她去拜访了乔伊斯·西蒙斯，她的背部有毛病，不常出去，乔伊斯详细地告诉她她儿子的情况，详尽地讲述了他、他妻子和他孩子的优点。她保持沉默，尽管这很困难。我的问题是，她苦笑着想，我认为我的儿子真的是太优秀了，一种高贵的力量迫使我不提这一点。
The next time she heard it was several nights later. She sat up in bed and, half aloud, said, “I’ m not dreaming, and it certainly is the swing! ”She threw on her robe and her slippers and went downstairs, feeling her way in the dark carefully, for though sounds seemed not to reach Julius, lights did wake him. Softly she unlocked the back door and, stepping out into the moonlight, picked her way through the wet grass and in sight of the big oak, she saw it swooping powerfully through the air in its wide arc, and the shock it gave her told her that she had not really believed it. There was a child in the swing, and she paused with a terrible fear clutching at her. Could it be a sleepwalking child from somewhere in the neighborhood? And would it be dangerous to call out to the child, or would it be better to go up and put out a hand to catch the swing gently and stop it? She walked nearer softly, afraid to startle the child, her heart beating with panicky speed. It seemed to be a little boy and, she noticed, he was dressed in ordinary clothes, not pajamas, as a sleepwalker might be. Nearer she came, still undecided
what she should do, shaking with fear and strangeness.
她第二次听到这个消息是在几个晚上之后。她从床上坐起来，半大声地说:“我不是在做梦，那肯定是秋千!她穿上袍子和拖鞋，走下楼梯，在黑暗中小心翼翼地摸索着，虽然朱利叶斯听不到声音，但灯光确实把他吵醒了。她轻轻地打开后门，走到月光下，在潮湿的草地上小心地走着，看见了那棵大橡树，只见它以宽阔的弧线有力地从空中俯冲下来，它给她带来的震撼告诉她，她并不真的相信。秋千上有个孩子，她因为害怕而停了下来。会不会是附近某个在梦游的孩子?对孩子大声喊叫会不会很危险?还是说走上去，伸出一只手轻轻地抓住秋千，让它停下来会更好?她轻轻地走近一些，生怕吓着孩子，她的心在惊慌地快速跳动着。那似乎是个小男孩，她注意到他穿着普通的衣服，而不是像梦游者那样穿着睡衣。她走得更近了，但仍不知道该怎么办，因为恐惧和陌生而浑身发抖。
She saw then that it was James. “Jamie?’ she cried out questioningly, and immediately shrank back, feeling that she must be making some kind of terrible mistake. But he looked and saw her, and, bright in the moonlight, his face lit up, as it had used to do when he saw her, and he answered gaily, “Mommy!”
这时她才发现那是詹姆斯。“杰米?她疑惑地叫了一声，立刻往后退了一步，觉得自己一定是犯了什么可怕的错误。但他一看，看到了她，在月光下，他的脸明亮起来，就像他以前看到她时一样，他高兴地回答:“妈妈!”
She ran to him and stopped the swing–he had slowed down when he saw her–and knelt on the mossy ground and put her arms around him and he put his arms around her and squeezed tight. “I’ m so glad to see you!” she cried. “It’ s been such a long time since I’ve seen you!”
她跑向他，停止了秋千——他看到她时已经放慢了速度——跪在长满青苔的地上，用双臂抱住他，他也用双臂抱住她，紧紧地抱着。“见到你真高兴!””她哭了。“我已经很久没有见到你了!”
“I’m glad to see you too,” he cried, grinning, and kissed her teasingly behind the ear, for he knew it gave her goose bumps. “You know, ” he said, “I like this airplane, and sometimes I gor-r-r-r-and that’s the engine.”
“我也很高兴见到你。”他笑着叫道，并戏谑地吻了吻她的耳后，因为他知道这使她起了一身鸡皮疙瘩。“你知道，”他说，“我喜欢这架飞机，有时我砰——砰——砰——那是引擎。”
“Well, ” she said, “it is sort of like flying. Like an airplane, or maybe like a bird. Do you remember, Jamie, when you use to want to be a bird and would wave your arms and try to fly?”
“嗯，”她说，“这有点像飞行。就像一架飞机，或者一只鸟。你还记得吗，杰米，你曾经想成为一只鸟，挥舞着你的手臂，试着飞起来?”
“That was when I was a real little kid,” he said scornfully.
“那时候我还是个真正的小孩，”他轻蔑地说。
She suddenly realized that she didn’t know how old he was. One tooth was out in front; could that have been when he was six? Or seven? Surely not five? One
forgot so much. She couldn’t very well ask him; he would think that very odd, for a mother, of all people, should know. She noticed, then, his red checked jacket hanging on the nail on the tree; Julius had given him that jacket for his sixth birthday, she remembered now; he had loved it and had insisted on carrying it with him all the time, even when it was too warm to wear it, and Julius had driven a little nail in the oak tree for him to hang it on while he swung; the nail was till there, old and rusty.
她突然意识到她不知道他多大了。前面掉了一颗牙;会不会是他六岁的时候?还是七?肯定不是五?一个人忘得太多了。她不好意思去问他;他会觉得这太奇怪了，因为在所有人当中，只有一个母亲会知道。然后，她注意到他的红色格子夹克挂在树上的钉子上;她现在想起来了，这件夹克是朱利叶斯在他六岁生日时送给他的;他很喜欢它，坚持要一直带着它，即使天气太热，他也不愿戴它。朱利叶斯在橡树上钉了一颗小钉子，让他在秋千上挂着它;钉子还在，又旧又生锈。
“Mommy, how high does an airplane fly?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,”she said,“two thousand feet, maybe.”
“How much is a foot?”
“Oh, about as long as Daddy’s foot–I guess that’s why they call it that.”
“Have people always been the same size?”
“妈妈，飞机能飞多高?””他问道。
“哦，我不知道，”她说，“大概两千英尺吧。”
“一英尺多少钱?”
“哦，大概和爸爸的脚一样长——我想这就是为什么他们这么叫它的原因。”
“人们一直都是一样的身材吗?”
“Well, not exactly. They say people are getting a little bigger, and that most people are a little bigger than their great-granddaddies were.”
“Well [she saw the trap too late], then if feet used not to be as big, why did they call it a foot?”
“I don’t know. Maybe that isn’t why they call it a foot. We should look it up in the dictionary.”
“Does dictionary tell you everything?”
“Not everything. Just about words and what they mean and how they started to mean that.”
“But if there’s a word for everything, and if a dictionary tells you about every word, then how can it help but tell you about everything?”
“Well,” she said,“you’ve got a good point there. I’ll have to think that one over.”
“嗯,不完全是。他们说人们都长胖了一点，而且大多数人都比他们的曾祖父大了一点。”
“好吧(她发现陷阱太晚了)，那么，如果脚过去不那么大，为什么他们称它为脚呢?”
“我不知道。也许这不是他们叫它\"脚\"的原因。我们应该查字典。”
“字典能告诉你一切吗?”
“不是一切。只是关于词汇及其含义，以及它们是如何开始产生这种含义的。”
“但是如果每件事都有一个词，如果一本字典告诉你每一个词，那么它怎么能不告诉你每件事呢?”
“嗯，”她说，“你说得有道理。我得好好考虑一下。”
Another time he would ask,“Why is it, if the world is turning round all the time, we don’t fall off?”
“Gravity. You know what a magnet is. The earth is just like a big magnet.”
“But where is the gravity? If you pick up a handful of dirt, it doesn’t have any gravity.”
“Well, I don’t know. The center of the earth, I guess. Well, I don’t really know,”she said.
还有一次，他会问:“如果世界一直在转，为什么我们不会掉下来?”
“重力。你知道磁铁是什么。地球就像一块大磁铁。”
“可是重力在哪里呢?”如果你拿起一把土，它没有任何重力。”
“嗯，我不知道。我猜是地球的中心。嗯，我真的不知道，”她说
She felt as if the wheels of her mind, rusty from disuse, were beginning to turn again, as if she had not engaged in a real conversation, or thought about anything real, in so long that she was like a swimmer out of practice.
她觉得她的思想的轮子，因为没用而生锈了，又开始转动了，仿佛她已经很久没有参加过真正的谈话，没有想过任何真正的事情了，她就像一个出水的游泳运动员。
They talked for an hour, and then he said he had to go, with the conscientious keeping track of time he had used to show when it was time to go to school.
“See you later, alligator,”he said, and the answer sprang easily to her lips:“After a while, crocodile.”
他们谈了一个小时，然后他说他必须走了，他认真地记录着时间，过去他总是在什么时候该上学的时候显示时间。
“再见，鳄鱼，”他说，回答一下子蹦到了她的嘴边:“等一会儿，鳄鱼。
He came every night or two after that, and she lay in bed in happy anticipation, listening for the creak of the swing. She did not go out in her robe again; she hastily dressed herself properly, and put on her shoes, for she had always felt that a mother should look tidy and proper. There by the swing they sat, and they talked about the stars and where the Big Dipper was, and about what you do about a boy who is sort of mean to you at school all the time, not just now and then, the way most children are to each other, only they don’t especially mean it, and about what you should say in Sunday school when they say the world was made in six days but your mother has explained it differently, and about why the days get shorter in winter and longer in summer.
从那以后，他每隔一两个晚上就来一次。她躺在床上，满心期待地听着秋千的咯吱声。她不再穿着袍子出去了;她急忙穿好衣服，穿上鞋子，因为她一向认为做母亲的应该显得整洁得体。摇摆他们坐在那里,他们谈到了恒星和北斗七星在哪里,和你所做的是一个男孩的意思是你在学校,不仅,大多数孩子的方式,只有他们不特别的意思,和你应该说在周日学校当他们说世界是在六天但你妈妈解释了不同,以及为什么在冬季白天变短,夏天长。
She bloomed; she sang around the house until even Julius noticed it, and said, disapprovingly,“You seem to be awfully frisky lately.”And when Anne phoned apologetically to say that they would have to call off Sunday dinner because James had to attend a committee meeting, she was not only perfectly understanding–as she always tried to be in such instances–but she put down the phone with an utterly light heart, and took up her song where she had left it off.
她盛开;她在屋子里唱着歌，直到朱利叶斯也注意到了，不以为然地说:“你最近似乎太活泼了。当安妮抱歉地打来电话，说他们不得不取消周日的晚餐，因为詹姆斯要参加一个委员会会议时，她不仅完全理解——在这种情况下她总是努力这样做——而且她放下电话，心情非常轻松，接着她停止唱歌的地方又开始了。
Then one night, after they had talked for an hour, Jamie said,“I have to go now, and I don’t think I can come again, Mommy.”
一天晚上，他们谈了一个小时后，杰米说:“我现在得走了，我想我不能再来了，妈妈。”
“Okay,”she said, and whatever reserve had supplied the cheerful matter-of-factness with which she had once taken him to the hospital to have his appendix out, when he was four, came to her aid and saw to it that there was not a tremor in her voice or a tear in her eye. She kissed him, and then she sat and watched as he walked down the little back lane that had taken him to school, and off to college, and off to a job, and finally off to be married–and he turned, at the bend in the road, and waved to her, as he always used to do.
“好吧，\"她说。他四岁时，她曾带他去医院切除阑尾，当时她带他去做的是愉快而实事实实的事，而她的矜静也为她提供了帮助，确保她的声音不颤抖，眼睛不含泪水。她吻了吻他，然后坐在那里，看着他沿着那条小小的后巷走去，这条小巷曾载着他去上学，去上大学，去工作，最后去结婚——他在道路的拐弯处转过身来，像往常一样向她挥手致意。
When he was out of sight, she sat on the soft mossy ground and rested her arms in the swing and buried her face in them and wept. How long she had sat there, she did not know,when a sound made her look up. It was Julius, standing there, frail and stooped, in the moonlight, in his nightshirt with the everlasting afghan hung around his thin old shoulders. She hastily tried to rearrange her attitude, to somehow make it look as if she was doing something quite reasonable, sitting there on the ground with her head pillowed on the swing in the middle of the night. Julius had always felt she was a little foolish and needed a good deal of admonishing, and now he would think she was quite out of her mind and talk very sharply to her.
等他走得看不见了，她就坐在柔软的长满青苔的地上，把胳膊搁在秋千上，把脸埋在秋千里哭了起来。她不知道自己在那里坐了多久，突然听到一个声音，她抬起头来。那是朱利叶斯，他站在那里，虚弱而佝偻，在月光下，穿着睡衣，瘦削而苍老的肩膀上挂着那件永恒不变的毛毯。半夜里，她坐在地上，头枕在秋千上，匆忙地改变自己的态度，让自己看起来像是在做一件合情合理的事情。朱利叶斯一直觉得她有点傻，需要经常劝诫，现在他会认为她完全疯了，对她说话很严厉。
But his cracked old voice spoke mildly.“He went off and left his jacket,”he said.
但他那沙哑而苍老的声音说得很温和。“他离开了，留下了他的夹克，”他说。
She looked, and there was the little red jacket hanging on the nail.
她看了看，发现钉子上挂着一件红色的小夹克。
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