Chapter 9 little john seven

The morning was cold and bleak.The black shiny branches, stripped of their leaves by the storm, weep in the mist.On the drooping wet grass, Little John hurriedly ran, staring ahead, where the woods were shining, as if his purpose lay there.His eyes were red from crying and stiffened with fear and distress.He ran like this all night, as if he was looking for the light——with Xuan'er, he felt as if he was in his hometown.Every dark place sat abandoned wandering souls, and he didn't dare to look behind him. At last he came to the edge of a wood.He saw a pasture, and there was a fine rain of dust slowly falling on it.A horse stood beside a bare willow tree in the middle of the pasture.It bent its neck motionlessly, and the rain dripped lazily from its shiny back and matted mane.

John ran away anyway, along the woods.He looked at the lonely horse and the dark rain and smoke with weary and fearful eyes, and moaned slightly. "It's all over now," he thought, "and the sun will never come back. It will always be like this with me, like here." In his despair, he dared not stand still—something astonishing was about to happen, he thought. There he saw the large gate of a cottage and a small room under a lime tree with pale yellow leaves. He went through the door and walked through the wide tree-lined path, brown and yellow linden leaves were thickly spread on the ground.Purple asters grew beside the grass altar, and a few colorful autumn flowers were scattered here and there.

He approaches a pool.By the pool stood a large house with all doors and windows.Rose bushes and ivy grew at the base of the walls.Half-leaved chestnut trees surrounded it, and John could see shiny brown chestnuts on the ground and among the falling leaves. The feeling of cold death receded from him.He thought of his own place--there were chestnut trees there too, and he always went for smooth chestnuts then.Suddenly a wish bound him, and he seemed to hear a familiar voice calling.He sat down on the bench next to the big house and sobbed quietly. A peculiar smell caused him to look up again.Near him stood a man in a white apron with a pipe in his mouth.Around his belt was a piece of linden bark, with which he tied some flowers.John knew the smell too, and he remembered that he was in his garden, and thought of the gardener who had given him the beautiful caterpillars and picked the partridge eggs for him.

He wasn't afraid—although the person standing beside him was also alone.He told the man that he was abandoned and lost, and he followed him gratefully into the hut under the linden tree in the wilderness. There sat the gardener's wife, knitting black socks.A large jug of water was hanging over the coal fire in the stove, and it was boiling.On a mat by the fire sat a cat with its front paws up, just as Simon had sat there when John left. John sat by the fire to dry his feet. "Dys!—dys!—dys!—dys!" said the big clock.John looked at the steam whistling from the pitcher, at the little flames dancing lively and playfully over the pottery.

"I'm already in the human race," he thought. It was not uncomfortable for him, however.He felt safe and at peace.They were all kind and friendly, and asked him how he was most lovable. "It's my favorite place to stay," he replied. Here is his safety, and if he comes home, there will be sorrow and tears.He must keep silent, and people will say that he has done something wrong.He has to see everything again, and thinks about everything again. He really longed for his little house, and his father, Presto,—but he would rather suffer peaceful longing here than a bitter, troubled goodbye.He also felt as if he could think about Xuan'er without any disturbance here, but not at home.

Xuan'er must have gone away.Far away to a sunny place where coconut trees rise above the blue sea.He petitioned to repent here and waited for him. He therefore begged these two well-meaning people to allow him to remain with him.He is willing to help with gardening and flowers.Only this winter.Because he secretly hoped that Xuan'er would come back with Spring. The gardener and his wife thought that John was being treated harshly at home, so they escaped.They took pity on him and allowed him to stay. His wish came true.He stayed and helped with the maintenance of the flowers and the garden.They gave him a small room with a backboard bunk.There, in the morning, he saw how the damp yellow leaves of the linden fluttered against the window, and at night he saw the dark trunk, behind which the stars played a game of hide-and-seek, how they moved back and forth.He gave the stars names, and the brightest one he called Xuan'er.

As for the flowers, he knew almost all of them when he was in his hometown, and he narrated his story.To the majestic big aster, to the colorful Xinya, to the white chrysanthemum, which blooms long until the bitter autumn.When the other flowers were all dead, the chrysanthemums stood upright, and when John came to see them in the morning when the first snow fell, they also put out their happy faces and said, "Yes, we It’s still here! This is something you didn’t expect!” They thought they were brave, but after three days, they were all dead. At this time, the greenhouse is still full of woody ferns and coconut trees, in the humid heat, and there are strange flower whiskers of orchids.John gazed in amazement upon these splendid receptacles, and wondered at the whirling.But once he was in the field, everything was so cold and colorless, the snow with black footprints, the bare trees dripping with noise.

If the snow fell silently for a long time, and the branches were bent with growing down, John liked to walk into the purple twilight of the snow forest.It was stillness, but not death.If the bright whiteness of the outstretched twigs is distributed in the bright blue sky, or when the overburdened bushes shake off the snow and make it fly into a brilliant cloud, it is almost more beautiful than summer green. Once, in just such a procession, he was so far away that he saw only the snowy branches around him—half black, half white—and every sound, every life, seemed to dissolve in a brilliant mist, Then it seemed to him that he saw a small white animal walking in front of him.He followed it—it wasn't like an animal he knew—but when he tried to catch it, it disappeared hurriedly into a tree trunk.John peeped into the black hole, where the little animal was hiding, and asked himself, "Is this a spin?"

He doesn't miss him very much.He thought him bad, and he refused to lighten his confession.And the life around two good people made him have few doubts.Though he had to read a little big, dark book every night, many of which were treatises on God, he knew it, and read it lightly.But that night after his walk in the snow, he lay awake in bed, looking out at the cold moonlight on the ground.He suddenly saw a pair of small hands stretching out onto the bed frame to test it, and holding the edge of the bed tightly.Then between the hands appeared the tip of a small white fur cap, and at last he saw a pair of stern, small eyes under the raised eyebrows.

"Good evening, John!" said General Chi, "I have come to you to remind you of our former agreement. You cannot find the book because it is not yet spring. But you are thinking of that What a thick book that is, and I saw what you read? That can't be the right one. Don't believe it!" "I don't believe it, will know," John said.He turned over and was about to fall asleep.But the little key refused to leave his mind.From then on, every time he read that thick book, he also thought of the spoon, so he could see clearly that it was not right.