Яков Аракин - Практический курс английского языка 2 курс

забыла мне позвонить, если бы не была такой рассеянной.

V. Make up a dialogue, using the patterns from Units One and Two.

Example: A.: If my mother hadn't been ill 1 should have gone to the South last summer.

В.: You had bad luck. And what are your plans for the coming winter holidays?

A.: I haven't made any plans so far.

В.: Wouldn't you like to stay with me at my aunt's in the country?

A,: But would it be convenient to her?

В.: Certainly.

A.: Well, that's very nice of you to invite me.

TEXT. A DAY'S WAIT by Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway, Ernest (1899-1961): a prominent American novelist and short-story writer. He

began to write fiction about 1923, his first books being the reflection of his war experience. "The

Sun Also Rises" (1926) belongs to this period as well as "A Farewell to Arms" (1929) in which the

antiwar protest is particularly powerful.

During the Civil War Hemingway visited Spain as a war correspondent. His impressions of

the period and his sympathies with the Republicans found reflection in his famous play "The Fifth

Column" (1937), the novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (1940) and a number of short stories.

His later works are "Across the River and into the Trees" (1950) and "The Old Man and the

Sea" (1952) and the very last novel "Islands in the Stream" (1970) published after the author's death.

In 1954 he was awarded a Nobel Prize for literature.

Hemingway's manner is characterized by deep psychological insight into the human nature.

He early established himself as the master of a new style: laconic and somewhat dry.

He came into the room to shut the windows while we were still in bed and I saw he looked

ill. He was shivering, his face was white, and he walked slowly as though it ached to move. "What's

the matter, Schatz? "12

"I've got a headache."

12 Schatz ( Germ.): darling

"You'd better go back to bed."

"No, I'm all right."

"You go to bed. I'll see you when I'm dressed."

But when I came downstairs he was dressed, sitting by the fire, looking a very sick and

miserable boy of nine years. When I put my hand on his forehead I knew he had a fever.

"You go up to bed," I said, "you're sick."

"I'm all right," he said.

When the doctor came he took the boy's temperature.

"What is it?" I asked him.

"One hundred and two."13

Downstairs, the doctor left three different medicines in different colored capsules with

instructions for giving them. One was to bring down the fever, another a purgative, the third to

overcome an acid condition. The germs of influenza can only exist in an acid condition, he

explained. He seemed to know all about influenza and said there was nothing to worry about if the

fever did not go above one hundred and four degrees. This was a light epidemic of flu and there was

no danger if you avoided pneumonia.

Back in the room I wrote the boy's temperature down and made a note of the time to give the

various capsules.

"Do you want me to read to you?"

"All right, if you want to," said the boy. His face was very white and there were dark areas

under his eyes. He lay still in the bed and seemed very detached from what was going on.

I read aloud from Howard Pyle' s14 Book of Pirates, but I could see he was not following what

I was reading.

"How do you feel, Schatz?" I asked him.

"Just the same, so far," he said.

I sat at the foot of the bed and read to myself while I waited for it to be time to give another

capsule. It would have been natural for him to go to sleep, but when I looked up he was looking at

the foot of the bed, looking very strangely.

"Why don't you try to go to sleep? I'll wake you up for the medicine."

"I'd rather stay awake."

After a while he said to me, "You don't have to stay in here with me, Papa, if it bothers you."

"It doesn't bother me."

"No, I mean you don't have to stay if it's going to bother you."

I thought perhaps he was a little light-headed and after giving him the prescribed capsules at

eleven o'clock I went out for a while.

It was a bright, cold day, the ground covered with a sleet that had frozen so that it seemed as

if all the bare trees, the bushes, the cut brush and all the grass and the bare ground had been

varnished with ice. I took the young Irish setter for a little walk up the road and along a frozen creek.

At the house they said the boy had refused to let any one come into the room.

"You can't come in," he said. "You mustn't get what I have." I went up to him and found him

in exactly the position I had left him, white-faced, but with the tops of his cheeks flushed by the

13 102 °F (Fahrenheit) correspond to 38.9 °C (Centigrade), The Fahrenheit thermometer is used throughout the British

Commonwealth and in the United States. The boiling point of the Fahrenheit thermometer is 212°, the freezing point — 32°, the

normal temperature of a human bodyis about 99°. The Centigrade thermometer, used in Russia, France and other countries, has 0°

(zero) for its freezing point and 100° for the boiling point

14 Pyle, Howard(1853-1911): an American illustrator, painter and author.

fever, staring still, as he had stared, at the foot of the bed.

I took his temperature.

"What is it?"

"Something like a hundred," I said. It was one hundred and two and four tenths.

"It was a hundred and two," he said.

"Who said so?"

"The doctor."

"Your temperature is all right," I said. "It's nothing to worry about."

"I don't worry," he said, "but I can't keep from thinking."

"Don't think," I said. "Just take it easy."

"I'm taking it easy," he said and looked worried about something.

"Take this with water."

"Do you think it will do any good?"

"Of course, it will,"

I sat down and opened the Pirate Book and commenced to read but I could see he was not

following, so I stopped.

"About what time do you think I'm going to die?" he asked.

"What?"

"About how long will it be before I die?"

"You aren't going to die. What's the matter with you?"

"Oh, yes, I am. I heard him say a hundred and two."

"People don't die with a fever of one hundred and two. That's a silly way to talk!"

"I know they do. At school in France the boys told me you can't live with forty-four degrees.

I've got a hundred and two."

He had been waiting to die all day, ever since nine o'clock in the morning.

"You poor Schatz," I said. "Poor old Schatz, it's like miles and kilometers. You aren't going to

die. That's a diflerent thermometer. On that thermometer thirty-seven is normal. On this kind it's

ninety-eight."

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely," I said. "It's like miles and kilometers. You know, like how many kilometers we

make when we do seventy miles in the car?"

"Oh," he said.

But his gaze at the foot of the bed relaxed slowly. The hold over himself relaxed too, finally,

and the next day it was very slack and he cried very easily at little things that were of no importance.

VOCABULARY NOTES

1. to shiver υi дрожать, as shiver with cold

Syn. to tremble, to shudder, to start; to trembleis the most general word;

shuddering/startingis generally the result of (great) fear or disgust, е.g. He seemed perfectly calm,

only a slight trembling of his voice and hands showed he was excited. Keith shuddered at the sight