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儿童英语读物 Mystery Behind the Wall CHAPTER 10 What It All Meant

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Professor Nichols sat down at the dining room table and began to look at the coins. From an inside pocket he took a magnifying1 glass like one Benny had seen a watchmaker use. He fitted it into his eye.

Rory and the Aldens leaned excitedly on the table, watching the professor.

“What a sight! What a sight,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Oh, my, oh, my!”

Suddenly Professor Nichols put his finger on a gold coin.

“Look here!” he exclaimed, speaking to Benny who was nearest. “There are only ten coins like this in the whole wide world! You can see it is a four dollar gold piece. And here is one of the ten!”

“That makes the collection valuable, doesn’t it?” Benny asked.

“Valuable? Valuable? Oh, yes. It is priceless! Now look. Here is a twenty-cent piece. Did any of you ever hear of a twenty-cent piece?”

“No,” they all answered. They were fascinated2 by the professor and all he knew about the coins.

“Well, no wonder. These twenty-cent pieces didn’t last long. You can see that they would get mixed up with quarters. That made a lot of trouble. Nobody liked the coins. Very soon they weren’t made anymore. I haven’t seen one of them for years, and I don’t own one myself.”

“How can you tell if it is a real twenty-cent piece?” asked Benny. “We don’t know a thing about coins.”

Professor Nichols took the magnifying glass from his eye and smiled at Benny. “Of course you don’t. I’m glad to tell you. Look here. Feel the edge of this coin. It has a smooth edge for one thing. I’ll take a quarter out of my pocket. You see, the edge is milled. That means it has little ridges3.”

“I see,” Rory said. “The edge of the twenty-cent piece is smooth.”

“That’s right,” the professor said. “Now look at the figure of the woman on the coin. She’s the goddess Liberty and she is often on older U. S. coins. But here on the twenty-cent piece she is sitting down. A coin collector calls this ‘Liberty Seated.’ If there were only Liberty’s head shown, it would be a different coin altogether.”

“Are all these coins valuable?” asked Mr. Alden.

“Oh, yes. Even the pennies are valuable. Somebody knew what he was doing when he collected these. However, the gold piece and the twenty-cent piece are the best of all.”

“What about that Indian-head penny?” Jessie asked.

Professor Nichols smiled. “A lot of people like to collect pennies. Some pennies are very hard to find and that makes them worth a lot. But most of the pennies here are worn. That makes them of less value. They’re interesting to people just beginning to collect coins.”

Henry said, “All of these coins are forty years old at least.”

The professor said, “This may surprise you. Sometimes the oldest coin is not worth the most. I have coins from Roman times that are not worth as much as some of these U. S. coins. That’s because the fewer there are, the more each one is worth.”

“I see,” Benny said. “That’s interesting.”

Rory nodded. “Aye,” he said softly.

Professor Nichols turned to Mr. Alden. “James,” he said, “this is an unusual collection. And it is put together in an unusual way. There must be a story behind it. Who owns it?”

“I really don’t know,” said Grandfather. “But we know who used to own it. The children found the coins after a great hunt. They followed a lot of false clues. One clue said ‘Look on the back of the house.’ You look, Andrew, on the back of that coin card.”

Professor Nichols carefully turned the cardboard4 over and saw the photograph.

“This very house!” he said. “I’m beginning to get some ideas.”

Grandfather looked at Violet and asked, “You still have the coin case, don’t you? Will you get it for the professor?”

Violet went to the hall stairs and ran up to her room.

The professor could not sit still. He pushed back his chair and walked back and forth5, waiting for Violet. He did not wait long. She was soon back and put the blue case into his hand.

The professor could not speak for a minute. He said, “Of course I know this! A little girl—Stephanie Shaw—made this. I knew her father. I helped her a little on this collection myself.”

Mr. Alden said, “Then we are right. This is the Blue Collection.”

“It certainly is. I never knew what became of it after the Shaws went to France. Has it been hidden here all this time? I can’t understand why no one ever claimed it.”

“The children learned that the Shaw family died in France many years ago,” Mr. Alden said. “Benny found Stephanie’s journal hidden behind a loose board in a closet wall.”

“Rory helped, too,” Benny said.

Rory added, “The empty coin case was there, Granda.”

“We’ll show you all the clues,” Benny offered.

Professor Nichols said, “What a story! It is a wonderful collection that might easily have been lost forever. Oh, I don’t like to think that I might have missed this collection entirely6!” He shuddered7. “I would indeed like to see all of the things you found.”

“Here is Stephanie’s journal,” said Violet. “I brought that down, too.”

“It is her writing,” said Professor Nichols. “And you children worked out the mystery? I never could have done it.”

“What do you think we should do with this collection?” asked Henry. “Should we keep it or sell it? Would anybody buy it?”

“I would!” said Professor Nichols. “There are valuable coins in this collection. It would give me great happiness to own it. However, I don’t want to take the famous Blue Collection away from you children.”

Benny said, “You knew Stephanie. I think you should have it.”

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” the professor said. “I’ll pay you for the Blue Collection. Then I’ll select some special coins for each one of you.”

He quickly pulled five coins off the blue cloth from different places on the card. He gave one to each of the Aldens and Rory.

“There!” he said. “You Aldens can start your own collection. I think you’ll enjoy it.”

“Start a collection with four coins?” exclaimed Benny.

The professor nodded. “You’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll add more coins. The minute people know that you are making a collection, they will help you.”

“I think I’ll collect Canadian coins,” Rory said. “I’m visiting the Aldens. I’m from Canada.”

“You are?” said Professor Nichols with a sharp look at the boy. “Maybe you have a Canadian five-cent piece with a beaver8 on it. And there’s a famous silver dollar from 1947 with men paddling a canoe. Some of the early fur traders, I guess. Yes, you can have an exciting collection.”

That evening at dinner, Professor Nichols looked at Benny and Rory. He said, “You boys are hiding part of the mystery about the Blue Collection from me.“

“We’re not!” Benny exclaimed. “We showed the journal and the clues and told you about the Jenny Wren9 Shop. That’s all there is.”

The professor shook his head. “I’ll tell what I’m wondering about. How did you boys happen to find the empty coin case and the papers in the closet wall?”

Benny said, “That’s easy. Vacation came and I was lonesome.”

“You were?” asked the professor and laughed. “I can’t believe that! But I still don’t understand.”

“Well, you see,” Benny explained, “all my friends were away and I was lonely. So Grandfather invited Rory to come.”

“That’s right,” Rory said. “Mrs. McGregor knows my family. That’s how it happened.”

“Of course Rory had to have the room next to mine,” Benny went on. “We didn’t know anything about Stephanie then or that it had been her room.”

Professor Nichols smiled. He could see that the only way to get the whole story was to let Benny tell it his way.

Benny went on, “We had rooms next to each other. That made us think of a telegraph between them. We thought we’d run a cord through holes in our closet walls.”

“It was a good idea,” Rory said. “But then we found all this stuff in the hole. Say, Benny, we never did finish our telegraph!”

“That’s right,” Benny exclaimed. “I guess our next mystery is how to make it work.”

The other Aldens and Professor Nichols all laughed.

“If you can’t find a mystery, make one,” the professor said.

Benny added, “And I’ll tell you something else, I’m not lonesome anymore.”

“Good!” said Grandfather. “That’s all I want.”


点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 magnifying 034e3f0a47b1b761a42e4e7bb21d3b80     
放大的
参考例句:
  • Fame is a magnifying-glass. 名誉是放大镜。
  • It is unusual for people to press their differences by magnifying them. 对人们来说,以夸大差异的方式强调差异是不正常的。
2 fascinated YtKzID     
a.被强烈地吸引住,感到着迷的
参考例句:
  • China has always fascinated me. 中国一直令我心驰神往。
  • The children watched, fascinated, as the picture began to appear. 电影开始以后孩子们入迷地观看着。
3 ridges 9198b24606843d31204907681f48436b     
n.脊( ridge的名词复数 );山脊;脊状突起;大气层的)高压脊
参考例句:
  • The path winds along mountain ridges. 峰回路转。
  • Perhaps that was the deepest truth in Ridges's nature. 在里奇斯的思想上,这大概可以算是天经地义第一条了。
4 cardboard DTGyB     
n.硬纸板,卡纸板
参考例句:
  • She brought the shopping home in a cardboard box.她将买的东西放在纸箱里带回家。
  • There is a sheet of stiff cardboard in the drawer.在那个抽屉里有块硬纸板。
5 forth Hzdz2     
adv.向前;向外,往外
参考例句:
  • The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
  • He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。
6 entirely entirely     
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地
参考例句:
  • The fire was entirely caused by their neglect of duty. 那场火灾完全是由于他们失职而引起的。
  • His life was entirely given up to the educational work. 他的一生统统献给了教育工作。
7 shuddered 70137c95ff493fbfede89987ee46ab86     
v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 );发抖;(机器、车辆等)突然震动;颤动
参考例句:
  • He slammed on the brakes and the car shuddered to a halt. 他猛踩刹车,车颤抖着停住了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
  • I shuddered at the sight of the dead body. 我一看见那尸体就战栗。 来自《简明英汉词典》
8 beaver uuZzU     
n.海狸,河狸
参考例句:
  • The hat is made of beaver.这顶帽子是海狸毛皮制的。
  • A beaver is an animals with big front teeth.海狸是一种长着大门牙的动物。
9 wren veCzKb     
n.鹪鹩;英国皇家海军女子服务队成员
参考例句:
  • A wren is a kind of short-winged songbird.鹪鹩是一种短翼的鸣禽。
  • My bird guide confirmed that a Carolina wren had discovered the thickets near my house.我掌握的鸟类知识使我确信,一只卡罗莱纳州鹪鹩已经发现了我家的这个灌木丛。
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