1. What duties did Jerusha have on the first Wednesday every month and why?
2. Who was in room F?
3. How did Jerusha feel at the end of the day?
4. Why do you think Jerusha's imagination could get ger into trouble?
5. What did Jerusha see when she was going to Mrs. Lippett's office?
6. Who was the gentleman Jerusha saw in the hall?
7. Why was Herusha left in the asylum after she had finished school at 14?
8. What made the Trustee take notice of Jerusha?
9. What details about Jerusha's future education did Mrs.Lippett tell her?
10. What strange condition was set by that Trustee? And why?
11. Was Jerusha glad? Why?
12. Express your personal opinion on children's life in the John Grier Home
Blue Wednesday
The first Wednesday in every month was a Perfectly Awful Day--a day to
be awaited with dread, endured with courage and forgotten with haste.
Every floor must be spotless, every chair dustless, and every bed
without a wrinkle. Ninety-seven squirming little orphans must be
scrubbed and combed and buttoned into freshly starched ginghams; and
all ninety-seven reminded of their manners, and told to say, 'Yes,
sir,' 'No, sir,' whenever a Trustee spoke.
It was a distressing time; and poor Jerusha Abbott, being the oldest
orphan, had to bear the brunt of it. But this particular first
Wednesday, like its predecessors, finally dragged itself to a close.
Jerusha escaped from the pantry where she had been making sandwiches
for the asylum's guests, and turned upstairs to accomplish her regular
work. Her special care was room F, where eleven little tots, from four
to seven, occupied eleven little cots set in a row. Jerusha assembled
her charges, straightened their rumpled frocks, wiped their noses, and
started them in an orderly and willing line towards the dining-room to
engage themselves for a blessed half hour with bread and milk and prune
pudding.
Then she dropped down on the window seat and leaned throbbing temples
against the cool glass. She had been on her feet since five that
morning, doing everybody's bidding, scolded and hurried by a nervous
matron. Mrs. Lippett, behind the scenes, did not always maintain that
calm and pompous dignity with which she faced an audience of Trustees
and lady visitors. Jerusha gazed out across a broad stretch of frozen
lawn, beyond the tall iron paling that marked the confines of the
asylum, down undulating ridges sprinkled with country estates, to the
spires of the village rising from the midst of bare trees.
'Who wants me?' she cut into Tommy's chant with a note of sharp anxiety.
Mrs. Lippett in the office,
And I think she's mad.
Ah-a-men!
Tommy piously intoned, but his accent was not entirely malicious. Even
the most hardened little orphan felt sympathy for an erring sister who
was summoned to the office to face an annoyed matron; and Tommy liked
Jerusha even if she did sometimes jerk him by the arm and nearly scrub
his nose off.
Jerusha went without comment, but with two parallel lines on her brow.
What could have gone wrong, she wondered. Were the sandwiches not thin
enough? Were there shells in the nut cakes? Had a lady visitor seen
the hole in Susie Hawthorn's stocking? Had--O horrors!--one of the
cherubic little babes in her own room F 'sauced' a Trustee?
The long lower hall had not been lighted, and as she came downstairs, a
last Trustee stood, on the point of departure, in the open door that
led to the porte-cochere. Jerusha caught only a fleeting impression of
the man--and the impression consisted entirely of tallness. He was
waving his arm towards an automobile waiting in the curved drive. As
it sprang into motion and approached, head on for an instant, the
glaring headlights threw his shadow sharply against the wall inside.
The shadow pictured grotesquely elongated legs and arms that ran along
the floor and up the wall of the corridor. It looked, for all the
world, like a huge, wavering daddy-long-legs.
Jerusha's anxious frown gave place to quick laughter. She was by
nature a sunny soul, and had always snatched the tiniest excuse to be
amused. If one could derive any sort of entertainment out of the
oppressive fact of a Trustee, it was something unexpected to the good.
She advanced to the office quite cheered by the tiny episode, and
presented a smiling face to Mrs. Lippett. To her surprise the matron
was also, if not exactly smiling, at least appreciably affable; she
wore an expression almost as pleasant as the one she donned for
visitors.
'Sit down, Jerusha, I have something to say to you.' Jerusha dropped
into the nearest chair and waited with a touch of breathlessness. An
automobile flashed past the window; Mrs. Lippett glanced after it.
'Did you notice the gentleman who has just gone?'
'I saw his back.'
'He is one of our most affluential Tru
Эдуард
ВЮК, г. Ижевск
Анна хорошо справилась с заданием. Очень благодарен ей! Рекомендую обращайтесь не пожалеете.
Наталья
ШФ ИвГУ
Все быстро, чётко, без правки. Большое спасибо за аперативность и качество.
Виктория
РУДН
спасибо большое!!! быстро и чётко выполнена очередная работа. Наталья лучшая:)
Студент
Тюменский индустриальный университет
отличная работа, именно так прокомментировала данную работу мой преподаватель)