15 The Mouse-Burglar

The Mouse-Burglar My grandmother hustled me back into my own bedroom and out on to the balcony. 'Are you ready?' she asked. 'I'm going to put you in the sock now.' 'I hope I can manage this,' I said. 'I'm only a little mouse.' 'You'll manage,' she said. 'Good luck, my darling.' She popped me into the sock and started lowering me over the balcony. I crouched inside the sock and held my breath. Through the stitches I could see out quite clearly. Miles below me, the children playing on the beach were the size of beetles. The sock started swinging in the breeze. I looked up and saw my grandmother's head sticking out over the railings of the balcony above. 'You're nearly there!' she called out. 'Here we go! Gently does it. You're down!' I felt a slight bump. 'In you go!' my grandmother was shouting. 'Hurry, hurry, hurry!

我奶奶赶紧把我赶回自己的卧室，走到阳台上。 “你准备好了吗?”她问。 “我现在要把你放进袜子里。”“我希望我能做到，”我说。 “我只是一只小老鼠。“你会设法的，”她说。 “祝你好运，亲爱的。”她把我塞进袜子里，开始把我从阳台上放下来。 我蜷缩在袜子里，屏住呼吸。 透过缝线，我看得很清楚。 在我下面几英里处，在海滩上玩耍的孩子们像甲虫一样大。 袜子开始在微风中摇摆。 我抬头一看，看到祖母的头从楼上阳台的栏杆上伸出来。 “你快到了!”她喊道。 “我们走吧!”轻轻地做。 你下来!”我感到轻微的颠簸。 “进去吧!”我奶奶喊道。 “快，快，快!”

Search the room!' I jumped out of the sock and ran into The Grand High Witch's bedroom. There was the same musty smell about the place that I had noticed in the Ballroom. It was the stench of witches. It reminded me of the smell inside the men's public lavatory at our local railway-station. As far as I could see, the room was tidy enough. There was no sign anywhere that it was inhabited by anyone but an ordinary person. But then there wouldn't be, would there? No witch would be stupid enough to leave anything suspicious lying around for the hotel maid to see.

搜一搜房间!”我从袜子里跳出来，跑进了大女巫的卧室。 这个地方和我在舞厅里注意到的地方一样，散发着霉味。 那是女巫的恶臭。 这让我想起了我们当地火车站男厕所里的气味。 在我看来，这个房间是够整洁的。 除了一个普通人之外，没有任何迹象表明有人住在这里。 但那样就没有了，不是吗? 没有哪个女巫会蠢到把可疑的东西到处乱放给酒店服务员看。

Suddenly I saw a frog jumping across the carpet and disappearing under the bed. I jumped myself. 'Hurry up!' came my grandmother's voice from somewhere high up outside. 'Grab the stuff and get out!'

突然，我看见一只青蛙跳过地毯，消失在床底下。 我自己也跳了下去。“快点!”外面高处传来祖母的声音。 “拿上东西滚出去!”

I started skittering round and trying to search the room. This wasn't so easy. I couldn't, for example, open any of the drawers. I couldn't open the doors of the big wardrobe either. I stopped skittering about. I sat in the middle of the floor and had a think. If The Grand High Witch wanted to hide something top secret, where would she put it? Certainly not in any ordinary drawer. Not in the wardrobe either. It was too obvious. I jumped up on to the bed to get a better view of the room. Hey, I thought, what about under the mattress? Very carefully, I lowered myself over the edge of the bed and wormed my way underneath the mattress. I had to push forward hard to make any headway, but I kept at it. I couldn't see a thing. I was scrabbling about under the mattress when my head suddenly bumped against something hard

我开始四处走动，试图搜查房间。 这并不容易。比如，我打不开任何抽屉。 我也打不开大衣柜的门。 我不再四处乱窜。 我坐在地板中间，想了想。 如果大女巫想把绝密的东西藏起来，她会把它放在哪里? 当然不是在普通的抽屉里。 衣柜里也没有。 这太明显了。我跳到床上以便把房间看得更清楚。 嘿，我想，床垫下面怎么样? 我小心翼翼地从床沿上爬下来，钻到床垫下面。 我必须奋力向前才能取得进展，但我坚持了下来。 我什么也看不见。当我的头突然撞到坚硬的东西时，我正在床垫下摸索

inside the mattress above me. I reached up and felt it with my paw. Could it be a little bottle? It was a little bottle! I could trace the shape of it through the cloth of the mattress. And right alongside it, I felt another hard lump, and another and another. The Grand High Witch must have slit open the mattress and put all the bottles inside and then sewn it all up again. I began tearing away frantically at the mattress cloth above my head with my teeth. My front teeth were extremely sharp and it didn't take me long to make a small hole. I climbed into the hole and grabbed a bottle by the neck. I pushed it down through the hole in the mattress and climbed out after it. Walking backwards and dragging the bottle behind me, I managed to reach the edge of the mattress. I rolled the bottle off the bed on to the

在我上面的床垫里面。 我伸出手，用爪子摸了摸。 会是一个小瓶子吗? 那是一个小瓶子!我可以透过床垫的布追踪到它的形状。 就在它旁边，我感到又有一个硬块，一个又一个。 大女巫一定把床垫撕开了，把所有的瓶子都放了进去，然后又把它缝了起来。 我开始用牙齿疯狂地撕扯头顶上的床垫布。 我的门牙非常锋利，没过多久我就钻了一个小洞。 我爬进洞里，抓住一个瓶子的脖子。 我把它从床垫的洞里推下去，跟着它爬了出来。 我向后走，把瓶子拖在身后，好不容易走到床垫的边缘。 我把瓶子从床上滚到床上

carpet. It bounced but it didn't break. I jumped down off the bed. I examined the little bottle. It was identical to the one The Grand High Witch had had in the Ballroom. There was a label on this one. FORMULA 86, it said. DELAYED ACTION MOUSEMAKER. Then it said, This bottle contains five hundred doses. Eureka! I felt tremendously pleased with myself. Three frogs came hopping out from under the bed. They crouched on the carpet, staring at me with large black eyes. I stared back at them. Those huge eyes were the saddest things I had ever seen. It suddenly occurred to me that almost certainly once upon a time they had been children, those frogs, before The Grand High Witch had got hold of them. I stood there clutching the bottle and staring at the frogs. 'Who are you?' I asked them. At that exact moment, I heard a key turning in the lock of the door and the door burst open and The Grand High Witch swept into the room. The frogs jumped underneath the bed again in one quick hop. I darted after them, still clutching the bottle, and I ran back against the wall and

地毯。它弹了弹，但没有折断。 我从床上跳下来。 我检查了那个小瓶子。 它和大女巫在舞厅里拿的那把一模一样。 这个上面有个标签。 上面写着公式86。延迟动作鼠标制造器。 然后它说:这瓶装五百剂。 尤里卡!我对自己感到非常满意。 三只青蛙从床底下跳了出来。 他们蹲在地毯上，用又大又黑的眼睛盯着我。 我也盯着他们。那双大眼睛是我见过的最悲伤的东西。 我突然想到，几乎可以肯定，在大女巫抓住这些青蛙之前，它们也曾是孩子。 我站在那里抓着瓶子，盯着青蛙。 “你是谁?”我问他们。 就在这时，我听到钥匙在门锁上转动，门突然开了，大女巫冲进了房间。 青蛙们又一次快速地跳到了床底下。 我追上他们，手里还抓着瓶子，我跑回墙边，然后