词汇：child

n. 儿童，孩子；子孙；产物

相关场景

“Dead,” Clara said. “She stopped here with two buffalo hunters, had the child and left. July showed up two weeks later, half dead from worry.” “So you adopted them both,” Augustus said. “You war always one to grab.” “Listen to him,” Clara said. “Hasn’t seen me in sixteen years, and he feels free to criticize.>>完整场景

“If this is Sheriff Johnson’s child, whereabouts is his wife?’ Augustus asked.>>完整场景

“Now, see, all your worrying was for nothing,” Augustus whispered to Lorena. “She’s got a young child.” Lorena held her peace. The woman seemed kind—she had even offered her a bath—but she still felt frightened. What she wanted was to be on the trail again with Gus. Her mind kept looking ahead to when the visit would be over and she would have Gus alone again. Then she would feel less frightened.>>完整场景

“She ought to have loved him,” Sally said.“Ought don’t count for as much as a gnat, when you’re talking about love,” Clara said. “She didn’t. You seen her. She didn’t even care for Martin. We’ve already given July and Martin more love than that poor woman ever gave them. I don’t say that to condemn her. I know she had her troubles, and I doubt she was often in her right mind. I’m sorry she had no more control of herself to run off from her husband and child and get killed.” She stopped, to let the girls work on the various questions a little. It interested her which they would pick as the main point.>>完整场景

“No, he’s fine,” Clara said. “Maybe he’s telling you off for ignoring him all this time. I wouldn’t blame him.” With that she turned and went back in the house, leaving him with the baby, who at once began to cry even harder. July hoped one of the girls would come out and help, but neither seemed to be around. It seemed very irresponsible of Clara to simply leave him with the child. He felt again that she was not a very helpful woman. But then Ellie hadn’t been helpful, either.>>完整场景

“I might write books,” Clara said. “I’ve a hankering to try it. But then it’ll come a pretty morning and I see the horses grazing and think how I’d miss them. So I doubt I’ll get off to Richmond.” Just then the baby began to cry, squirming in his hands. July looked at Clara, but she made no effort to take the baby. July didn’t know what to do. He was afraid he might drop the child, who twisted in his hands like a rabbit and yelled so loud he turned red as a beet.>>完整场景

When he finished, he sat the rifle against the porch railing, telling himself that he would get up and leave. But before he could get up, Clara walked out on the porch with no warning at all and put the baby into his hands. She practically dropped the child into his lap, an act July felt was very reckless. He had to catch him.>>完整场景

“My husband’s dying,” Clara said. “But whether he’s dead or alive, I’ll still raise that child.” “I don’t know what to do,” July said. “It’s been so long since I done anything right that I can’t remember it. I don’t know if I’ll ever get Ellie back to Fort Smith. They might even have hired a new sheriff by now.” “Finding a job’s the least of your problems,” Clara said. “I’ll give you a job, if you want one. Cholo’s been doing Bob’s work and his too, and he can’t keep it up forever.” “I always lived in Arkansas,” July said. It had never occurred to him that he might settle anywhere else.>>完整场景

“It’s your child and her child,” she added. “But I don’t think she wants it, and if she means to prove me wrong she better do it soon.” July didn’t know what she meant and didn’t really care. He felt too low to pay any attention.>>完整场景

“July, I know you’re tired,” Clara said. “I expect you’re heartsick. I’m going to say a terrible thing to you. I used to be ladylike, but Nebraska’s made me blunt. I don’t think that woman wants you or the baby either. I don’t know what she does want, but she left that baby without even looking at it.” “She must have been addled,” July said. “She had a hard trip.” Clara sighed. “She had a hard trip, but she wasn’t addled,” she said. “Not every woman wants every child, and plenty of wives don’t want the husbands they took.>>完整场景

July wished she would leave him alone. She had taken him in and fed him, saved his wife and cared for his child, and yet he did wish she would just leave him alone. He felt so weak himself that if he hadn’t been braced against the porch railing he might have rolled off the steps. He had nothing to say and nothing to offer. And yet there was something tireless in Clara that never seemed to stop. His head hurt so he felt like shooting himself, the baby was squalling overhead, and yet she would ask questions.>>完整场景

But now, in a minute, the relief was gone, and he was reminded of all her difficulties, how nothing he did pleased her, not even finding her in Ogallala. He didn’t know what more to do or say. She had married him and carried his child, and yet she wouldn’t turn her head to look at him.>>完整场景

“Hired on with some traders,” he said. “Come all this way and then headed back.” “I guess your child didn’t live,” the doctor said one day. “I wouldn’t have expected it to, out on the prairie, with you having such a close call.” Elmira didn’t answer. She remembered her breasts hurting, that was all. She had forgotten the child, the woman with the two daughters, the big house. Maybe the baby was dead. Then she remembered July, and Arkansas, and a lot that she had forgotten. It was just as well forgotten: none of it mattered compared to Dee. It was all past, well past. Some day shewould have Zwey shoot her and she wouldn’t have to think about things anymore.>>完整场景

“Jake was gambling and a fight got started,” he said. “Jake shot off a buffalo gun and the bullet went through the wall and killed my brother. I was out of town at the time. Peach, my sister-in-law, wanted me to go after Jake. I wish now I hadn’t.” “It sounds accidental to me,” Clara said. “Though I know that’s no consolation to your family. Jake was no killer.” “Well, I didn’t catch him anyway,” July said. “Elmira ran off and Roscoe come and told me. Now Roscoe’s dead too. I don’t guess it could be my baby.” Clara was still studying the two faces, the little one and the gaunt, tired one. It interested her, what came across from parent to child.>>完整场景

“We use this nipple for the colts,” she said. “Sometimes the mares don’t have their milk at first. It’s a good thing this boy’s got a big mouth.” The child was sucking greedily on the nipple, which was quite large, it seemed to July.>>完整场景

“If that woman was your wife, I guess this child is yours,” Clara said. “She had it the night she was here. Then she left. She was very anxious to get to town. I don’t believe she realized what a fine boy she had. We all took to him right away around this place.” July had not really looked at the baby. He had supposed it belonged to Clara—she had said her name was Clara. She was watching him closely with her kind gray eyes. But what she said seemed so unlikely that he couldn’t really credit it. Elmira had said nothing to him about wanting a baby, or planning to have one, or anything. To him, so tired he could hardly sit straight, it just meant another mystery. Maybe it explained why Elmira ran away—though it didn’t to him. As for the little boy, wiggling in Clara’s lap, he didn’t know what to think. The notion that he had a son was too big a notion. His mind wouldn’t really approach it. The thought made him feel lost again, as he had felt out on the plains.>>完整场景

“Mr. Johnson, I guess I’ve got another piece of news for you,” Clara said. She looked from the baby’s face to his, seeking resemblances. It seemed to her the foreheads were the same, and though the child had little hair, the little was the same color as July’s. He was not a bad-looking man, just gaunt from his travels, and dirty. She had a notion to make him shave, when he had rested, so she could compare his face with the baby’s. He could use Bob’s razor. One week ago she had stropped it and shaved Bob.>>完整场景

But if he was married to the woman, the baby drooling on her bosom might be his. Clara felt a flash of annoyance, most of it with herself. She had already grown attached to the baby. She liked to lie in bed with him and watch him try to work his tiny hands. He would peer at her for long stretches, frowning, as if trying to figure life out. But when Clara laughed at him and gave him her finger to hold he would stop frowning and gurgle happily. Apart from the colic, he seemed to be a healthy baby. She knew the mother was probably still in Ogallala, and that she ought to take the child into town and see if the woman had had a change of heart and wanted her son, but she kept putting it off. It would be discouraging to have to give him up—she told herself if the mother didn’t want him bad enough to come and get him, then the mother was too foolish to have him. She reminded herself it was time she got out of the habit of babies. She wouldn’t be likely to get any more, and she knew she ought to figure out another way to keep herself amused. But she did like babies. Few things were as likely to cheer her up.>>完整场景

Yet there he was, his eyes staring upward, as helpless as the baby. She put the child down again and fed Bob soup until her wrist got tired from holding his head. Then she lay Bob’s head back on his pillow, and ate the rest of the chicken soup herself.>>完整场景

They came when you didn’t want them and had needs you didn’t always want to meet. Worst of all, they died no matter how much you loved them—the death of her own had frozen the hope inside her harder than the wintry ground. Her hopes had frozen hard and she vowed to keep it that way, and yet she hadn’t: the hopes thawed. She had hopes for her girls, and might even come to have them for the baby at her bosom, child of another mother. Weak as it was, and slim though its chances, she liked holding the child to her. I stole you, she thought. I got you and I didn’t even have to go through the pain. Your mother’s a fool not to want you, but she’s smart to realize you wouldn’t have much of a chance with her and those buffalo hunters.>>完整场景

It was unnatural, she knew, for a mother to leave her child a day after it was born. Of course, children were endless work.>>完整场景

She picked the baby up and held it to her bosom—the thought was in her head that if he saw her with a child it might make a difference. Bob might see it, think it was theirs. It might startle him into life again.>>完整场景

“I wish we had a goat,” Clara said. “I’ve heard goat’s milk is better for babies than cow’s milk. If you see any goats next time you go to town, let’s buy a couple.” Then she grew a little embarrassed. Sometimes she talked to Cholo as if he were her husband, and not Bob. She went downstairs, made a fire in the cookstove and began to boil some milk. When it was boiled, she took it up and gave the baby a little, dipping a cotton rag in the milk and letting the baby suck it. It was a slow method and took patience. The child was too weak to work at it, but she knew if she didn’t persist the baby would only get weaker and die. So she kept on, dribbling milk into its mouth even when it grew too tired to suck on the rag.“I know this is slow,” she whispered to it. When the baby had taken all it would, she got up to walk it. It was a nice moonlight night and she went out on her porch for a while. The baby was asleep, tucked against her breast. You could be worse off, she thought, looking at it. Your mother had pretty good sense—she waited to have you until she got to where there were people who’ll look after you.>>完整场景

Besides, Clara remembered the immense fatigue that had seized her when Betsey was born. Though the last, Betsey had been the most difficult of her births, and when it was over she could not lift her head for three hours. To speak took an immense effort—and Elmira had had a harder time than she had. Best just to let her rest. When her strength came backshe might not be so ill-disposed toward the child.>>完整场景

“They say you’re married to a sheriff,” Clara said, thinking conversation might help. The man might be the cause of her flight, she thought. She probably didn’t want him in the first place, and hadn’t asked for this child.>>完整场景