The Bramble Bush by Ch. Mergcndahl

As Fran Walker, one of the nurses of the Mills Memorial Hospital, was sitting between rounds behind her duty desk, she often recollected her childhood, which would return to her as it had existed in reality '96 bewildering, lonely, and frustrating.

Her father, Mr. Walker, had owned a small lumber business' in Sagamore, one of Indiana's numerous smaller towns, where Fran had lived in a large frame house on six acres of unused pasture land'. The first Mrs. Walker had died, when Fran was still a baby, so she did not remember her real mother at all. She remembered her stepmother, though – small, tight-lipped, thin-faced, extremely possessive of her new husband and the new house which had suddenly become her own. Fran had adored her father, tried desperately to please him. And since he desired nothing more than a good relationship between his daughter and his second wife, she had made endless attempts to win over her new mother. But her displays of affection had not been returned. Her stepmother had remained constantly jealous, resentful, without the slightest understanding of the small girl's motives and emotions.

Fran felt herself losing out, slipping away into an inferior position. She began to exaggerate – often lie about friends, feelings, grades at school, anything possible to keep herself high in her father's esteem, and at the same time gain some small bit of admiration from her mother. The exaggerations, though, had constantly turned back on her, until eventually a disgusted Mrs. Walker had insisted she be sent away to a nearby summer camp. "They award a badge of honour there," she had said, "and if you win it – not a single untruth all summer – then we'll know you've stopped lying and we'll do something very special for you."

"We'll give you a pony," her father had promised.

Fran wanted the pony. More than the pony, she vranted to prove herself. After two months of nearpainful honesty, she finally won the badge of honour, and brought it home clutched tight in her fist, hiddenin her pocket while she waited, waited, all the way from the station, all during the tea in the living-room for the exact proper moment to make her announcement of glorious victory.

"Well?" her mother had said finally. "Well, Fran?"

"Well – ", Fran began, with the excitement building higher and higher as she drew in her breath and thought of exactly how to say it.

"You can't hide it any longer, Fran." Her mother had sighed in hopeless resignation. "We know you didn't win it, so there's simply no point in lying about it now."

Fran had closed her mouth. She'd stared at her mother, then stood and gone out to the yard and looked across the green meadow where the pony was going to graze. She had taken the green badge from her pocket, fingered it tenderly, then buried it beneath a rock in the garden. She had gone back into the house and said, "No, I didn't win it," and her mother had said, "Well, at least you didn't lie this time," and her father had held her while she'd cried and known f inally that there was no further use in trying.

Her father had bought her an Irish setter as a consolation prize.

 

Give Russian equivalents for the following words and expressions from the text and use them in the sentences of you own: adore smb, a good relationship, make endless attempts, display of affection, exaggerate, keep oneself high in smb's esteem, eventually, stop lying, do smth special for smb, prove oneself, draw in one's breath, stare at smb, a consolation prize.

 

III Questions on fhe text:

1) Where did Fran Walker spend her childhood?

2) What can you say about her parents?

3) Describe Fran's stepmother.

4) Why did Fran do her best to win her stepmother's affection though she didn't like the woman?

5) What was the new mother's attitude towards her stepdaughter?

6) What was the reason of Fran's exaggerations? What do you think she said about her friends, school, etc.?

7) What way out did Fran's stepmother find to make the girl stop lying?

8) Which phrase in the text proves that it wasn't easy for the girl to win the badge?

9) Fran was eager to announce her victory, wasn't she? Prove it by the text.

10) It was only once that Fran's stepmother believed her. When? Was it of any use?

 

IV Discuss the following:

1) Give a character sketch of the girl's stepmother.

2) Analyse relationship between the girl and her stepmother. What prevented them from becoming friends? Do you think stepmother may have become mother for the girl?

3) Whose side did Fran's father take? Give your grounds.

4) Why was it so difficult for the girl to announce her victory? Which words of her stepmother killed all her three-month hopes and expectations?

5) What did the girl bury beneath a rock in the garden? Was it only the badge?

6) Why was Fran's childhood "bewildering, lonely and f rustrating"?

 

V Retell the texf on the part of 1) Fran Walker, 2) her stepmother, 3) one of the teachers at the summer camp.

Unit 8