The Cricket 时代广场的蟋蟀.pdf

The Cricket （蟋蟀）In Times Square One Tucker—The mouse’s name. A mouse was looking at Mario. The mouse’s name was Tucker, and he was sitting in the opening of an abandoned drain pipe in the subway station at Times Square. The drain pipe was his home. Back a few feet in the wall, it opened out into a pocket that Tucker had filled with the bits of paper and shreds 碎步 of cloth he collected. And when he wasn’t collecting, “scrounging 讨要钱财食物等，伸手索要” as he called it, or sleeping, he liked to sit at the opening of the drain pipe and watch the world go by—at least as much of the world as hurried through the Times Square subway station. Tucker finished the last few crumbs 碎屑 of a cookie he was eating—a Lorna Doone shortbread 用面粉奶油等制成的脆饼 he had found earlier in the evening—and licked of his whiskers. “Such a pity,” he sighed. Every Saturday night now for almost a year he had watched Mario tending his father’s newsstand. On weekdays, of course, the boy had to get to bed early, but over the weekends Papa Bellini let him take his part in helping out with the family business. Far into the night Mario waited. Papa hoped that by staying open as late as possible his newsstand might get some of the business that would otherwise have gone to the larger stands. But there wasn’t much business tonight. “The poor kid might as well go home,” murmured Tucker Mouse to himself. He looked around the station. The bustle 闹哄哄 of the day had long since subsided, and even the nighttime crowds, returning from the theaters and movies, had vanished. Now and then a person or two would come down one of the many stairs that led from the street and dart through the station. But at this hour everyone was in a hurry to get to bed. On the lower level the trains were running much less often. There would be a long stretch of 一段长时间的 silence; then the mounting roar as