【英文读物】Merrimeg

【英文读物】MerrimegMERRIMEG AND THE CHIMNEY IMPS ONCE upon a time there was a little girl. Her name was Merrimeg.Sometimes she was good, and sometimes she was naughty. But she was always merry.One morning her mother gave her a little broom and told her to sweep the kitchen floor and her mother said, “Now, Merrimeg, be sure to sweep all the dust neatly into the dustpan, and carry it out to the cabbage garden. Will you do that?”“Yes, mother,” said Merrimeg.“Dont sweep any dust into the corners,” said her mother; and she left Merrimeg in the kitchen, and went into the front room to make the beds.Merrimeg swept and swept with her little4 broom, and she made up a little song and sang it out loud, keeping time with the broom.Every little while her mother would call to her from the next room and say,“Have you finished yet, Merrimeg?”“Not yet, mother!” Merrimeg would say, and then she would go on with her sweeping and singing.She was very happy, but this wasnt her day to be good; for she was in a great hurry to be out in the garden in the sunshine, and she forgot all about what her mother had said to her; so instead of wasting time on the dustpan, she swept all the dust into the nice clean fireplace, a very large fireplace, big enough to roast a pig in. An iron pot was hanging there, but there wasnt any fire, and her mother had just cleaned off the hearth so that it was as spotless as new brick.She swept the dust from under the table and chairs, and out of the corners, and everywhere. And every single bit of the dust she swept into the fireplace, and piled it up at the back on5 the clean bricks, out of sight. And all the while she kept on singing. She was stooping down into the fireplace, with her head right at the back, under the chimney, when her mother called to her from the next room and said,“Have you finished now, Merrimeg?”“Yes, mother!” said Merrimeg. “Im going out into the garden now!”But she didnt go out into the garden. Instead of that,just as she said, “Im going out6 into the garden now,” whack! she was knocked against the iron pot, and bang! she was tossed against the back of the fireplace, and whoof! she was whirled up into that black dirty chimney like a leaf in a wind.And it was a wind, too! She was sucked up in a wind that was rushing up the chimney,and such a wind! Never had she been caught in a wind like that, not even in the wildest March weather. Before she knew it, she was high up inside the chimney in the pitch dark, stuck fast, and the wind began to die down.“Mother!” she cried, at the top of her voice. But her mother couldnt hear her; and all that Merrimeg heard was a sound as if a great many people were laughing at her, a long way off.It was pitch dark. But all around her, in the black soot of the chimney, were little sparks, like the sparks you see in the soot at the back of the fireplace when the fire is crackling on the hearth,thousands of tiny sparks, and all of them getting dimmer as the wind died down more and more.7Suddenly the wind sprang up again, stronger and stronger, and the harder the wind blew the brighter the sparks burned. Merrimeg had to hold on fast with her feet and back to keep from being blown out of the top of the chimney.She could see better now, and she saw what these sparks were. There were thousands of little black imps, sitting along the edges of the bricks in the walls of the chimney; and each spark was the head of a little black imp. She had to look close to see them, they were so tiny, but there they were, sure enough. She could hear them laughing, and it sounded as if a great crowd of grown-up people were laughing fit to kill, a long, long way off.Every one of them was holding in his hands a wee mite of a bag with two handles, and when he would press these handles together a strong wind would come out of the bag and blow on his head, and make it burn bright like a spark of fire; and when he stopped pressing the handles of his wind bag his head would grow dim again. They were working away at a great rate, keeping their8 heads alive, and the wind they made nearly blew Merrimeg up out of the chimney.She didnt have much time to think about it, for all at once the imps stopped working at their wind bags, and the wind began to go down and their heads to grow dim, and before she knew what was coming Merrimeg felt these little imps, thousands of them, pounce on her, all over her, as thick as flies on honey, over her hair, and face, and arms, and legs, and dress, everywhere, and they were scratching and pinching, so that she screamed out in fright, and nearly fell down the chimney, for there was no wind now to hold her up.But just then, when all the sparks had nearly gone out, the terrible little creatures suddenly stopped scratching and pinching and began to pump away at their wind bags like mad; for in another second their sparks would have been out, and that would have been the end of them.