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儿童英语读物 The Stuffed Bear Mystery CHAPTER 7 Too Many Bears

时间:2017-10-23 07:38来源:互联网 提供网友:qing   字体: [ ]
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When the Aldens strolled over to the toy hospital after lunch, the CLOSED sign was posted on the door.

“Don’t worry,” Peggy said. “Doc closed early. He needs to finish all the work he has on the bears people dropped off for the jamboree. He told me he’ll be in the workshop.”

Peggy and the children walked around the back. They were surprised to see Miss Sayer’s yellow van backing out. The passenger with the familiar red furry2 head wasn’t in the van.

“Oh, dear, Chatter3 Bear must be inside,” Peggy said. “That must mean Doc is working on him again. He fixed4 him as best he could. Finally he told Miss Sayer her bear is far from ready to be presented.”

Peggy unlocked the back door for the Aldens. When they stepped inside, Chatter Bear lay on the worktable.

Doc was bent5 over him, adjusting some buttons. “Oh, thank goodness you’re here, everybody. I could sure use some help. Miss Sayer said this fellow now talks when she doesn’t want him to and won’t speak when she does want him to. I’ve spent more time on this patient than all my other ones put together.”

“That’s why we came over,” Jessie said. “Peggy’s going to show us how to fix some of the bears.”

“The children also want to find out more about Herr Bears,” Peggy said. “I’m letting them use our computer to get the information they’re looking for.”

“Even bear detectives use computers,” Benny told Doc.

Chatter Bear continued to stare at the ceiling. For once, he had nothing to say. Doc had taken out all his batteries. “I found it too strange having his eyes blink at me while I worked on his voice box,” Doc explained. “Oh, one more problem. You know that pile of old bear-collector magazines we were going to try to sell, Peggy? Now some of those are gone, too.”

“Lots of things are walking out of the toy hospital,” Peggy said. “Not just bears.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask, but did you children have any luck tracking down Herr Bear?” Doc asked. “His owner gets here tomorrow afternoon. I don’t even want to think about telling her he disappeared. I could try tracking down another one, but it won’t be the same.”

Benny touched Chatter Bear’s red nylon ears. “We saw some brown furry ears sticking out of Mrs. Keppel’s bag. Only we couldn’t tell if they were Herr Bear’s ears.”

Doc snapped some batteries into Chatter Bear’s voice box. “Is Mrs. Keppel that lady who was here the morning you children arrived? With the gray hair in a braid? I never had a chance to help her with her bear. Now I wonder what she wanted.”

“What bear?” Jessie asked.

“She had a bear in a blue bag, if I remember correctly,” Doc said. “I thought she left after that, but I guess she waited for me in the Bear Den1.”

“That’s when we saw her,” Henry said. “I wonder if the bear she brought you was the one Benny saw in her booth.”

Doc was done. He pressed a button, and Chatter Bear began to speak: “I’mmm Chaaaattter Baaaaar. Annnnnd IIIII like toooooo talkkkkkk.”

The children covered their ears until Doc turned off the bear.

“Can I put the eye batteries in?” Benny asked Doc.

Doc smiled. “Sure. Then you can help me look for a glass eye for Mister B. How’s that sound?”

“Like a good idea,” Benny said. “Now it’s Mister B.’s turn to see the doctor.” After he got Chatter Bear’s eyes flashing again, he went off with Doc.

Peggy brought the other children back into the office where the computer was. She clicked the computer mouse a few times. “Here’s a list of our favorite places on the Internet for finding information about stuffed bears.”

“Thanks,” Jessie said. “We’re going to look up Professor Tweedy’s name and Mrs. Keppel’s and Miss Sayer’s, too. Maybe we can find some clues about them.”

Peggy laughed and clicked on another list. “The professor has probably written a few articles about the presidents for his college. If you type in his name on any of these places, perhaps you can learn more about him. I don’t know about the other two people, though. They’re not well-known, except to us, of course.”

“Thanks, Peggy,” Jessie said. “After I finish with the computer, I’ll come back and help you with your bears.”

After watching Jessie work for a few minutes, Henry and Violet decided6 to go back to the workroom. They found Doc and Benny sifting7 through small drawers of glass eyes.

“Here’s one that’s just right!” Benny cried when he found a golden glass eye for Mister B.

“A perfect match,” Doc said. “Let’s set it aside. After you kids make a new covering for him, we can attach this new eye and his old one.”

Peggy showed the three interested children how to slip off Mister B.’s old wool coat. Then she helped them take it apart to use as a pattern to cut pieces for a new wool covering.

“He looks so sad and pale now, lying there in his thin lining8 with no nose, or eyes, or mouth,” Violet said a few minutes later.

“He looks like a ghost bear,” Henry said as he carefully traced a pattern on some stiff paper from the outline of Mister B.’s old wool cover. “Here, Violet. Why don’t you cut the pieces now? You have steady hands.”

For the next hour, the two older children cut and trimmed and stitched a new woolly cover for Mister B.

“While you two are stitching, I’m going to have Benny stuff Mister B.,” Peggy said. “I did manage to find some grade-A fleece. Goodness knows what happened to the fleece we sheared9 in the barn.”

The children worked quietly, stuffing, sewing, threading, and snipping10. They only stopped when they heard Jessie call them into the office.

“Come here!” she cried. “You won’t believe what I found out about Professor Tweedy.”

Henry sat down next to Jessie and began to read the computer screen.

“Skip to the last paragraph in this article about him,” Jessie said. “The rest is about some kind of special history project he’s working on.”

Henry read the last paragraph aloud:

    “Professor Tweedy’s hobbies include bird-watching, stamp collecting, and rare-book collecting. For this article, his wife reported that he has also become an expert on antique bears. When asked about this unlikely hobby for a professor of historical research on presidents, all Professor Tweedy would say is, ‘Indeed!’”

“Wow!” Benny said. “Now he sounds like someone who might want Herr Bear.”

Jessie handed Henry a few sheets of paper that she had printed out. “Maybe, maybe not. Here’s an article about Herr Bears that I found on the computer when I looked up antique bears. And guess the name of the daughter of the man who designed the Herr Bear twins. Just guess.”

The other children could hardly stand it.

“Is it Miss Sayer’s first name?” Benny asked.

“Hazel?” Violet guessed.

Jessie shook her head from side to side. “Nein!” she said. “That means ‘no’ in German. The designer’s daughter’s name is Elsa. That’s Mrs. Keppel’s first name.”

Peggy looked over Henry’s shoulder to read the sheet of paper. “Elsa Berne.”

“Maybe Berne was Mrs. Keppel’s name before she got married,” Henry said. “The article says another child’s name was Kurt Berne, but he died about thirty years ago.”

Jessie sank back in her chair. “I couldn’t find anything about Elsa Keppel or Hazel Sayer. But I learned a lot about Herr Bears. Some of it is sad. Herr Bears were the most popular bears in Europe a long time ago. They stopped being made after the factory burned down.”

“It did?” Violet said. “How awful.”

“Yes,” Jessie went on, “that made Fritz Berne, the designer, lose his business. I even found an article from an old newspaper about the fire and how the Bernes had to sell their house and almost everything they owned.”

Violet was curious about this sad end to the Herr Bears. “Did you find out anything about the twin bears, Jessie?”

“That’s the saddest part,” Jessie said. “In the article about the fire, it mentioned that some of the family’s things were stolen around the time the Bernes moved away. But no one was ever caught. Apparently11 the twin bears either disappeared or were stolen.”

“You mean Doc’s Herr Bear could’ve been stolen before?” Benny asked.

“Looks like it,” Jessie said. “The twin Herr Bears were valuable even back then. Fritz Berne used pictures of them in his advertisements and everything. The bears were famous.”

“That’s so sad,” Violet said. “If Mrs. Keppel is related to Fritz Berne, maybe the Herr Bear is hers. I wonder how we can find out.”

The Aldens grew quiet now. Stories about children separated from their homes always made them think about when they left their own home after their mother and father died.

Violet went back to the workroom. She brought something for Jessie. “Look!” she told her sister. “This will cheer you up.”

“Mister B.!” Jessie broke into a huge smile. “You have a new covering. Or you almost have a new cover anyway. Plus, you look as if you’ve been eating too many blueberries. You’re nice and chubby12 now. Grandfather isn’t going to recognize you. You’re almost as good as new.”

Just as the other children began to explain how they had fixed Mister B., they heard a loud thud in the book room. Everyone ran over at once.

“Professor Tweedy!” Peggy said. “What are you doing up there? Please come down.”

Professor Tweedy was tottering13 on a step stool and looking very confused. Above him stood a bookcase with a half-empty shelf. On the floor lay a pile of books.

A large picture book rested on top of the heap. The title said: Antique Bears.


点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 den 5w9xk     
n.兽穴;秘密地方;安静的小房间,私室
参考例句:
  • There is a big fox den on the back hill.后山有一个很大的狐狸窝。
  • The only way to catch tiger cubs is to go into tiger's den.不入虎穴焉得虎子。
2 furry Rssz2D     
adj.毛皮的;似毛皮的;毛皮制的
参考例句:
  • This furry material will make a warm coat for the winter.这件毛皮料在冬天会是一件保暖的大衣。
  • Mugsy is a big furry brown dog,who wiggles when she is happy.马格斯是一只棕色大长毛狗,当她高兴得时候她会摇尾巴。
3 chatter BUfyN     
vi./n.喋喋不休;短促尖叫;(牙齿)打战
参考例句:
  • Her continuous chatter vexes me.她的喋喋不休使我烦透了。
  • I've had enough of their continual chatter.我已厌烦了他们喋喋不休的闲谈。
4 fixed JsKzzj     
adj.固定的,不变的,准备好的;(计算机)固定的
参考例句:
  • Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗?
  • Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定,我们就不应该随意改变。
5 bent QQ8yD     
n.爱好,癖好;adj.弯的;决心的,一心的
参考例句:
  • He was fully bent upon the project.他一心扑在这项计划上。
  • We bent over backward to help them.我们尽了最大努力帮助他们。
6 decided lvqzZd     
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的
参考例句:
  • This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
  • There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。
7 sifting 6c53b58bc891cb3e1536d7f574e1996f     
n.筛,过滤v.筛( sift的现在分词 );筛滤;细查;详审
参考例句:
  • He lay on the beach, sifting the sand through his fingers. 他躺在沙滩上用手筛砂子玩。 来自《简明英汉词典》
  • I was sifting the cinders when she came in. 她进来时,我正在筛煤渣。 来自辞典例句
8 lining kpgzTO     
n.衬里,衬料
参考例句:
  • The lining of my coat is torn.我的外套衬里破了。
  • Moss makes an attractive lining to wire baskets.用苔藓垫在铁丝篮里很漂亮。
9 sheared 1e4e6eeb7c63849e8f2f40081eedb45c     
v.剪羊毛( shear的过去式和过去分词 );切断;剪切
参考例句:
  • A jet plane sheared the blue sky. 一架喷气式飞机划破蓝空。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
  • The pedal had sheared off at the pivot. 踏板在枢轴处断裂了。 来自辞典例句
10 snipping 5fe0030e9f7f57e9e018d33196ee84b6     
n.碎片v.剪( snip的现在分词 )
参考例句:
  • The crew had been snipping it for souvenirs. 舰上人员把它剪下来当作纪念品。 来自辞典例句
  • The gardener is snipping off the dead leaves in the garden. 花匠在花园时剪枯叶。 来自互联网
11 apparently tMmyQ     
adv.显然地;表面上,似乎
参考例句:
  • An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽,豁然开朗。
  • He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。
12 chubby wrwzZ     
adj.丰满的,圆胖的
参考例句:
  • He is stocky though not chubby.他长得敦实,可并不发胖。
  • The short and chubby gentleman over there is our new director.那个既矮又胖的绅士是我们的新主任。
13 tottering 20cd29f0c6d8ba08c840e6520eeb3fac     
adj.蹒跚的,动摇的v.走得或动得不稳( totter的现在分词 );踉跄;蹒跚;摇摇欲坠
参考例句:
  • the tottering walls of the castle 古城堡摇摇欲坠的墙壁
  • With power and to spare we must pursue the tottering foe. 宜将剩勇追穷寇。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
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