touqing经典少儿英语小故事：丑小鸭

2021年1月11日发(作者：胡仙)

经典少儿英语小故事：丑小鸭

One evening, the sun was just setting in with true
splendor when 1)a flock of beautiful large birds appeared out
of the bushes. The duckling had never seen anything so
beautiful. They were dazzlingly white with long waving necks.
They were swans and uttering a peculiar cry. They spread out
their magnificent broad wings and flew away from the cold
regions toward warmer lands and open seas.

They 2)mounted so high, so very high, and the ugly little
duckling became strangely uneasy. He circled around and
around in the water like a wheel, 3)craning his neck out into
the air after them. Then he uttered the shriek so 4)piercing
and so strange that he was quite frightened by himself. Oh,
he could not forget those beautiful birds, those happy birds
and as soon as they were out of sight. He 5)ducked right down
to the bottom and when he came up again, he was quite beside
himself. He did not know what the birds were or where’d they
flew. But all the same, he was more drawn towards them than
he had ever been by any creatures before. He did not envy
them in the least. How could it occur to him even to wish to
be such a marvelous beauty? He wouldn’t be thankful if only
the ducks would have tolerated him among them, the poor ugly
creature.

Early in the morning, a peasant came along and saw him,
he went out onto the ice and hammered a hole in it with his
heavy wooden shoe, and carried the duckling home to his wife.
There, it soon 6)revived. The children wanted to play with it.
But the duckling thought they were going to ill use him and
rushed in and he frightened to the milk- pan, and the milk


7)spurted out all over the room. The woman shrieked and threw
up her hands. Then it flew to the butter-cask and down into
the meal-tub and out again. Oh, just imagine what it looked
like by this time. The woman screamed and tried to hit it
with the 8)tongs, and the children 9)tumbled over one another
in trying to catch it, and they screamed with laughter.

By good luck, the door stood open and the duckling flew
out among the bushes and the new fallen snow. And it lay
there, thoroughly exhausted, but it would be too sad to
mention all the privation and misery had to go through during
that hard winter. When the sun began to shine warmly again,
the duckling was in a marsh, lying among the rushes. The
larks were singing, and the beautiful spring had come. Then
all at once, it raised its wings and they flapped with much
greater strength than before and bore him off vigorously.
Before he knew where he was, he found himself in a large
garden with the apple trees were in full blossom. And the air
was scentedly with lilacs, the long branches of which
overhung the indented shores of the lake. Oh, the spring
freshness was so delicious. Just in front of him, he saw
three beautiful white swans advancing towards him from a
10)thicket. With 11)rustling feathers, they swam lightly over
the water. The duckling recognized the majestic birds, and he
was overcome by a strange melancholy.

“I will fly to them, the royal birds, and they will hack
me to pieces because I who am so ugly venture to approach
them. But it won’t matter. Better to be killed by them than
be snacked up by the ducks, 12)pecked by the hens, or
13)spurned by the hen wife, or suffer so much misery in the
winter.” So he flew into the water and swam towards the