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Commentary. fraternities –зд. студенческие братства, ассоциации студентов (часто обозначались буквами греч

fraternities – зд. студенческие братства, ассоциации студентов (часто обозначались буквами греч. алфавита, напр. Фи-Бета-Каппа)

a dogwood tree – кизил (Cornus Gen.), свидина кроваво-красная (Cornus Sanguinea)

Indian summer – бабье лето

a newsreel – ролик новостей

a feature -художественный фильм

to hunt big-game – охотиться на крупную дичь

the handwriting on the wall – (библ.) письмена на стене; зловещее предзнаменование: to see~, read~ - увидеть признаки надвигающегося несчастья.

a marquee – большая палатка, шатер, тент

a dime – 10-цент. монета

pronto – (амер. разг.) быстро, живо, скоро (исп. pronto = quickly)

a shoetree – колодка для сохранения формы обуви

loafers – мягкие кожаные туфли типа мокассин

Great Scott! – Черт возьми! Вот те на!

Exercise 1. Practise the pronunciation of the following words:

1. boudoir ['bu:dwQ:] 10. instantaneous [Linst(R)n'teInjRs]

2. mediocre ['mI:dIRukR] 11. precocious [prI'kRuSRs]

3. maple ['meIpl] 12. subtle ['sAtl]

4. confidante [kOnfI'dWnt] 13. sanctuary ['sWNktjuRrI]

5. contretemps ['kO:NtrRLtQ:N] 14. quartet [kwO:'tet]

6. ruefully ['ru:fulI] 15. implacable [Im'plWkRbl]

7. vehemently ['vI:ImRntlI] 16. perversely [pR'vR:slI]

8. vicariously [vaI'keRrIRslI] 17. audibly ['O:dRblI]

9. suffuse [sR'fju:z]

Exercise 2. Read the following extract:

Humming merrily to herself, Belinda was cleaning up the kitchen when Jane came into the house. “Hi,” she called as soon as she heard her sister’s step. “You missed a good rally. Ken made a speech.”

Jane was still seething at Ken’s parting thrust. She was used to being teased, but this, she considered, was very unfunny. It made her feel like one of Cinderella’s ugly stepsisters, a role for which she did not care. She stood in the hall and bit her lip.

“Hey, Jane, did you hear me? Ken made a speech.”

“I’ll bet he was just terrific,” Jane said acidly.

Belinda appeared in the doorway with a dish towel and glass in her hands. “He was, as a matter of fact,” She looked at her sister quizzically. “What’s the matter? Are you mad because he brought me home?”

The direct approach took Jane completely by surprise. It was the last thing she expected. Caught off guard, she overdid her denial. “I couldn’t care less.”

“Because if you are –”

Jane didn’t wait to hear the end of the sentence. “I haven’t any strings on Ken Sanderson,” she interrupted. “If you want him you’re welcome to him. But why anybody would want him,” she added, as she stamped upstairs, “is more than I know.”

A few minutes later, flinging her clothes angrily at a boudoir chair, Jane could have wished that pique had not made her so reckless. But now it was too late. She got into bed and turned out the light before Linda came upstairs.

She was still awake, an hour and a half later, when her parents came home. She could hear them arguing about something as they came upstairs. Her mother’s voice sounded half-amused, half-chiding. “Really, Mike,” Jane heard her say, “I do think you spend too much time with Helen Bancroft. Not that I mind, but Ernie has been known to get sore.”

Jane’s father chuckled. “What d’you think he’ll do – invite me to a duel at dawn?”

Her mother laughed, and her next remark was muffled by the closing of the bedroom door. Jane sighed and turned over. Grown-up disagreements always sounded so civilized. They never seemed to get really upset about things.

By the next morning she had not only forgotten this overheard scrap of conversation; even her own rancor had dwindled. It was a beautiful day. Trudy called and asked her to play tennis, and Jane agreed with alacrity.

“Think you could pry Ken loose from his car? I just met Bob Wright downtown and he asked me to try to get up some doubles.”

“I don’t think there’s a chance,” Jane said. She didn’t tell Trudy that she wasn’t in the mood even to make an attempt.

In the end they got Gordon as a fourth. He played a mediocre game, and Bob and Trudy beat Jane and her partner two straight sets. At noon, when they had to give up the court to some senior members, they all went back to the clubhouse porch and lounged around for half an hour, drinking cokes and talking. Bob was a freshman at the university this year — a commuting freshman, he called himself — and he was full of conversation about fraternities.

Greek letters, either singly or in combinations of three, meant little or nothing to Jane, and she was astonished at the intelligent questions Trudy asked. She herself couldn’t find much to say, and was rather relieved when the session broke up.

Trudy and Jane walked home together along the shady streets, while the boys went off on some errands. The maples were still green, but the dogwood trees were beginning to show color. Birds twittered among their branches, pecking at the bright red berries. Indian summer was almost over, and there was a slight nip in the air.

Like most good friends, the two girls usually had a dozen things to talk about, but today Jane felt a trifle constrained. She needed a confidante and would have liked to blurt out to Trudy the story of her contretemps with Ken, but pride kept her silent. Jane had never been one to spill her troubles. She had too much natural reserve.

Trudy, however, was quite unaware that Jane was feeling ill-used or unhappy about anything. She had a bubbly, outgoing disposition, and uppermost in her mind at the moment was the coming election of the yearbook staff. At Brookfield High it was traditional for the juniors to act as editors. The seniors were considered far too busy with more important things.

“I’d like to be art director,” Trudy said, with complete candor. “And I wish you’d get yourself elected literary editor. I think it would be heaps of fun to work together, don’t you?”

Jane nodded. Her eyes brightened at the very thought. In the back of her mind she had been cherishing a hope that some day she’d have a chance to work on the year-book. But literary editor — that was one of the big jobs!

Trudy became aware of her hesitation. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

“I just don’t think I’m popular enough to get elected,” Jane admitted ruefully.

“What’s popularity?” asked Trudy, who had never felt its lack. “It’s ability that counts.”

Jane wasn’t so sure. She remembered last year’s staff, and it seemed to her that personality rather than talent had brought in the votes.

“Anyway,” Trudy continued, “you could be popular if you tried.”

“How do you try to be popular?”

Trudy’s brown eyes widened. “Why, you work at it,” she said. “Like anything else. You’re nice to everybody and you smile a lot and act interested.”

Jane chuckled. “The way you put it, it sounds easy.”

“It is easy,” Trudy insisted. She stopped and tightened one of the screws on her racket press, then regarded her best friend thoughtfully. “D’you know something, Jane? I don’t think you make enough effort.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Jane began to feel acutely uncomfortable. First Ken, now Trudy. If they had conspired to knock the props out from under her they couldn’t have done a better job.

“I’m sorry.” Trudy backtracked hastily. “I didn’t mean...”

But Jane refused to be mollified. “I think trying to be things you aren’t is just plain silly. Why can’t people just be themselves?” She put the question so vehemently that Trudy looked startled. At that Jane burst out laughing. “Don’t mind me. I’m edgy today, for some reason, or other. How about going to the movies tonight, or do you have a date?”

* * *

The Brookfield Theater was small, and as usual it was crowded on Saturday night. Jane and Trudy missed the newsreel and cartoon, but arrived in time for the feature and found two seats on the side, feeling their way along in the sudden dark.

For an hour and a half they lived vicariously the life of a glamorous heroine who was big-game hunting in the wilds of Africa. When the picture ended and the lights flashed on, Jane slowly came back to reality. She and Trudy looked at each other. “Good, wasn’t it?” they asked simultaneously.

People began to stream up the aisles, but the girls decided to wait for the newsreel they had missed. They nodded to passing friends and waved casually to Polly and Jack Preston, who were seated in the center section of the same row.

Suddenly Jane stiffened. Borne in on the wave of the second-show crowd, who always had to scramble for seats, were Belinda and Ken Sanderson. For a second she couldn’t believe her eyes. Instinctively she searched for someone else with whom either of them might be. But then Linda turned and smiled up at Ken in a way that made it unmistakably plain that he was her date.

At the same instant the lights went out, hiding the hot flush which swept up Jane’s neck and suffused her face. She sat in the providential darkness as still as a stone, but her breath came in sharp, frenzied jerks. Hate swept over her, instantaneous and devastating. It blotted out the first overwhelming shock. She felt betrayed by both her sister and Ken, but most of all by Linda! Every bit of sisterly affection she had ever felt was torn to shreds. Her nails bit into the palms of her hands. To think that Belinda had dared to do this!

Never before had Jane known such humiliation. The scene witnessed in the kitchen last night had been unnerving, but it hadn’t prepared her for this! What a fool she had been to miss the handwriting on the wall. Why, just this noon, when she came home from playing tennis, Linda had been next door cooing over the Cadillac she hadn’t even bothered to look at last week! But even this Jane discounted, thinking that Ken just considered her little sister a precocious and amusing child.

A dozen signposts had pointed the way and Jane had ignored them all – all! She remembered scraps of conversation – Belinda asking innocently, “Do you think there’s anything wrong with going out with older boys?”

Oh, but she had been subtle — sly and subtle. Jane remembered with fury the mock innocence with which she had inquired, last night, “Are you mad because he brought me home?”

But worst of all, Jane thought, was her own reckless throwing away of the hand Linda had dealt her. “If you want him, you’re welcome to him,” she had said with a shrug.

“If you want him...” Well, Linda had wanted him, all right, and she hadn’t been twenty-four hours in taking possession. Jane could imagine people’s reaction. She’d be a laughingstock among her whole crowd. This was almost the worst blow of all – that others should know. That Ken and Linda would be seen, here at the movies, in the drugstore sitting over sodas, anywhere the coke crowd congregated. Jane didn’t think she could bear it.

“Ready to go now?” Trudy’s voice seemed to come from a great distance.

Jane nodded and got up, surprised that the feature film was beginning again. She had sat through the past fifteen minutes without seeing a thing on the screen. As she followed Trudy up the aisle she felt weak, as emotionally spent as though she had been in a severe accident. All she could think of was getting away, getting home.

Home. The word stopped her short. At home her mother and father were playing bridge with the Sandersons. And they all knew! She’d never be able to face them, never. She thought for a moment, childishly, that maybe she should run away.

Outside, under the brilliantly lighted marquee, two of Linda’s friends were standing together talking. Both Liza and Sally were frequently at the Howards’ house, and they smiled pleasantly at Jane, but she barely spoke to them. Did they know, too?

Oblivious to the interchange, Trudy was turning toward the drugstore. “How about a chocolate milk shake? I’m starved.”

“I don’t think so – not tonight. I’ve got to get home.” Jane’s voice sounded tight and strained.

Surprised, Trudy turned to look at her. “What’s the matter? You look sick.”

Jane snatched at the cue. “I’m not feeling very well,” she admitted. “Look, Trudy, I’ll call you in the morning. I think I’d better run.”

Run she did, the minute she was out of sight. She streaked through the dark streets like a fugitive, slowing down only when she thought the headlights of a passing car might pick her out.

But when she turned into Franklin Street and the house was at last in sight, she couldn’t brave the four adults in the living room. Quietly she crept along the hedge to the back yard and, disregarding the fact that she was wearing a good dress, she climbed the walnut tree to the place that had once been hers and Ken’s. If there had been anywhere else to go she would have gone there, but there wasn’t; this was the last resort.

Jane lay on the platform and pounded the worn boards with her fist, but she didn’t cry. She couldn’t afford to appear tear-stained or red-eyed. That would be the ultimate disgrace. Finally, after what seemed like hours, her heart stopped pumping so hard and she could begin to think.

There was only one thing to do. From the beginning she must have realized it. She would have to pretend that she didn’t care. No, she would have to do more than pretend. She would have to learn not to care. But while she was learning she’d have to convince everyone else that, really, she was amused by Ken’s being attracted to her younger sister. “He’s got himself an old car and a new girl,” she’d say, and somehow she’d manage to laugh.

But had she herself ever really been his girl? Hadn’t they just drifted together because it was the easy thing to do? In former years, of course, they had been inseparable. Even this past summer it had been easy to take Ken for granted — easy and foolish, as she was now finding out.

What was it that Trudy had said just this morning? “You don’t make enough effort.” Maybe, Jane thought sadly, Trudy was right after all. But how did Trudy and Polly and the other successful girls know what to do to attract a boy? How could she ever have been any different with Ken –anymore than good friends? That was what she had been, certainly – a friend who shared his triumphs and his woes and even loaned him money. The thought that he owed her that thirteen dollars and sixty-five cents made his infamy, in Jane’s eyes, double. Never again, no matter what happens, she promised herself. Never, never again! He could be begging, starving, crawling on his knees, and she wouldn’t loan him a thin dime.

Twin carburetors indeed! He had no right to have bought a second anything until he paid back his debt. Well, she’d get her money – and pronto. She’d say she just had to have it. She didn’t care if he had to sell the whole car to raise the cash.

Still fuming (anger at least made humiliation bearable), Jane finally climbed down the tree. Again she crept along the hedge in the darkness, then let her feet slap noisily on the concrete sidewalk as she made her second approach.

But still she couldn’t gather the courage to march into the living room. She rounded the house on the brick walk and slammed the back door behind her. To further announce her arrival, she opened and shut the refrigerator, although she couldn’t swallow a drop of the milk she poured into a glass. No matter! It went down the drain, and she ran cold water into the sink.

Time was getting short now, as she could see by the kitchen clock. Ken and Belinda might come in any minute. She had to get upstairs. The old-fashioned back stairs leading from the kitchen to a landing were a help. She ran up and paused for barely an instant at the halfway point, calling the expected good night to the quartet at the bridge table. Her mother, who was doubling five hearts, looked up and smiled. “Good night, dear. Was the movie good?”

“Terribly,” Jane said, although by now she had even forgotten its title.

“Come on down,” her father suggested, “and give me a kiss.”

“I’m too tired.” She blew him a kiss from where she stood and raced on upstairs. Never had the sanctuary of her room been so welcome. She wished she never would have to leave it again.

Without turning on a light Jane undressed, not flinging things helter-skelter as she had last night, but hanging her dress with neat precision on a hanger and carefully putting shoe trees in her loafers, as though this were the last time she might ever do these commonplace things. Talk and laughter floated up from the living room with astonishing clarity, so superficial that at any other time it would have been lulling.

“Two hearts.”

“Three clubs.”

“Pass.”

“Mike, you can’t pass!”

“Let’s make this the last rubber.” This came from Mr. Sanderson, with an ill-concealed yawn.

Jane opened the window and got into bed, curling into a tight ball of misery, her knees against her chest. She tried to imagine getting up tomorrow morning, greeting the family – facing Belinda, living through the hours until Monday.

Monday morning – that meant school!

By then everybody in Brookfield would know. Taking a girl to the movies in this town was like posting a billboard. By then Jane would have to be sufficiently composed to face the music without giving herself away. That this would mean severe self-discipline, she was already aware. Inevitably she cringed at the thought of the mortification she was bound to endure, but she was practical enough to know that there could be no more running and hiding. Somehow she’d have to develop a convincing front.

Voices from the street drifted up through the open window, cutting through the bridge talk downstairs. In spite of herself Jane began to tremble. Linda and Ken were coming.

Despising herself for doing it she slipped out of bed and crept to the window, dropping to her knees and peering out. Darkness enfolded and concealed her, but she was ashamed of her own implacable curiosity. That she should be reduced to this!

Nevertheless, she watched and listened perversely, although she couldn’t catch more than a word or two. The street light illumined Ken strolling along with his hands in his jacket pockets, looking down at Belinda, who was shorter by almost two feet. His hair, as usual, was rumpled, and Jane could even see that he was wearing his birthday-present sport shirt, a yellow gabardine. He looked relaxed and cheerful and unhurried, as Jane had seen him look a hundred times. But never before had she noticed that he was so attractive. Never had she considered that some day he might become a rather handsome man.

Belinda, who had on a pleated skirt and a pale blue sweater with the sleeves pushed above the elbows, was making a jingling noise with her charm bracelets as she gesticulated to illustrate something she was saying. Her hair shone like spun gold against the arc of light and her face, as heart-shaped as a kitten’s, looked smooth and untroubled. She paused on the sidewalk, and Ken stopped too, apparently answering a question she had asked him.

Jane strained to catch the words, but they had lowered their voices and were talking seriously now, standing facing one another. Belinda appeared especially diminutive and fragile from this distance, and Jane had to acknowledge that she also looked very pretty, in a bisque-doll sort of way. Envy, hard and cold as a knife blade, struck her unexpectedly. Never in her life could she look as appealing as that.

While Jane waited, heartsick, the pair moved, almost reluctantly, up the walk to the front steps. Jane lost sight of them then, but her imagination supplied the details. After some hesitation, Ken apparently came on up with Linda to the front door.

The sound of its opening combined with Belinda’s bright “Hello, everybody. Still at it?” as Jane tiptoed back to bed. Then Mr. Sanderson’s hearty voice bellowed, “Hi, kids, come on in.” Bluntly, and completely audibly, he added, “Great Scott, it’s the right boy but the wrong girl!”

Exercise 3. Find the following words and word combinations in the text you have read. Write out and learn the pronunciation. Give the Russian equivalents:

1. to take smb by surprise

2. to catch smb off guard

3. to invite smb to a duel

4. to be in the mood to smth

5. to lounge around

6. to spill one’s troubles

7. to cherish a hope

8. to tear to shreds

9. to be a laughing-stock

10. to take smb/smth for granted

11. to raise the cash

12. to gather the courage to do smth

13. to blow smb a kiss

14. to face the music

15. to give away

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