新概念英语背诵20篇.doc

新概念三Lesson 24  A skeleton in the cupboard  “家丑”
We often read in novels how a seemingly respectable person or family has some terrible secret which has been concealed from strangers for years. The English language possesses a vivid saying to describe this sort of situation. The terrible secret is called ‘a skeleton in the cupboard’. At some dramatic moment in the story, the terrible secret es known and a reputation is ruined. The reader's hair stands on end when he reads in the final pages of the novel that the heroine, a dear old lady who had always been so kind to everybody, had, in her youth, poisoned every one of her five husbands.
It is all very well for such things to occur in fiction. To varying degrees, we all have secrets which we do not want even our closest friends to learn, but few of us have skeletons in the cupboard. The only person I know who has a skeleton in the cupboard is e Carlton, and he is very proud of the fact. e studied medicine in his youth. Instead of ing a doctor, however, he became a essful writer of detective stories. I once spent an fortable weekend which I shall never forget at his house. e showed me to the guestroom which, he said, was rarely used. He told me to unpack my things and e down to dinner. After I had stacked my shirts and underclothes in two empty drawers, I decided to hang one of the two suits I had brought with me in the cupboard. I opened the cupboard door and then stood in front of it petrified. A skeleton was dangling before my eyes. The sudden movement of the door made it sway slightly and it gave me the impression that it was about to leap out at me. Dropping my suit, I dashed downstairs to tell e. This was worse than ‘a terrible secret’; this was a real skeleton! But e was unsympathetic. ‘Oh, that,’ he said with a smile as if he were talking about an old friend. ‘That's Sebastian. You forget that I was a medical student once upon a time. ’
参考译文
在小说中,我们经常读到一个表面上受人尊重的人物或家族,却有着某种多年不为人所知的骇人听闻的秘密。英语中有一个生动的说法来形容这种情