1 Part 01

Not far from where I live there is a queer old empty wooden house standing all by itself on the side of the road. I long to explore inside it but the door is always locked, and when I peer through a window all I can see is darkness and dust. I know the ground floor used once to be a shop because I can still read the faded lettering across the front which says THE GRUBBER. My mother has told me that in our part of the country in the olden days a grubber was another name for a sweet-shop, and now every time I look at it I think to myself what a lovely old sweet-shop it must have been. On the shop-window itself somebody has painted in white the words FOR SAIL. One morning, I noticed that FOR SAIL had been scraped off the shop-window and in its place somebody had painted SOLED. I stood there staring

离我住的地方不远的路边，孤零零地矗立着一座古怪的、古老的空木屋。 我渴望探索它的内部，但门总是锁着，当我透过窗户窥视时，我只能看到黑暗和灰尘。 我知道一楼曾经是一家商店，因为我还能看到前面褪色的“格鲁伯”字样。 我母亲告诉过我，在过去的日子里，在我们这个地方，“grubber”是糖果店的别称，现在我每次看到它，我都在想，它一定是一家多么可爱的古老的糖果店啊。 有人在橱窗上用白漆写了“SAIL”几个字。 一天早上，我注意到商店橱窗上的“FOR SAIL”被刮掉了，有人在那里涂上了“SOLED”。 我站在那里凝视

at the new writing and wishing like mad that it had been me who had bought it because then I would have been able to make it into a grubber all over again. I have always longed and longed to own a sweet-shop. The sweet-shop of my dreams would be loaded from top to bottom with Sherbet Suckers and Caramel Fudge and Russian Toffee and Sugar Snorters and Butter Gumballs and thousands and thousands of other glorious things like that. Oh boy, what I couldn't have done with that old Grubber shop if it had been mine! On my next visit to The Grubber, I was standing across the road gazing at the wonderful old building when suddenly an enormous bathtub came sailing out through one of the second-floor windows and crashed right on to the middle of the road!

看着新的文字，疯狂地希望是我买了它，因为那样我就可以把它重新变成一个垃圾了。 我一直渴望拥有一家糖果店。 我梦想中的糖果店将会从上到下装满果子露吸盘、焦糖软糖、俄罗斯太妃糖、糖鼻和黄油口香糖，以及成千上万其他类似的美味。 哦，天哪，要是格鲁伯的老商店是我的，我可不会把它弄成这样!下次去格鲁伯酒店的时候，我正站在马路对面，凝视着那幢漂亮的老建筑，突然一个巨大的浴缸从二楼的一扇窗户里冲了出来，正好砸在路中间!

A few moments later, a white porcelain lavatory pan with the wooden seat still on it came flying out of the same window and landed with a wonderful splintering crash just beside the bathtub. This was followed by a kitchen sink and an empty canary-cage and a four-poster bed and two hot-water bottles and a rocking horse and a sewing-machine and goodness knows what else besides.

过了一会儿，一只还留着木座的白色瓷便盆从同一扇窗户飞了出来，啪的一声落在浴缸旁边。 接着是一个厨房水槽、一个空金丝雀笼、一张四柱床、两个热水瓶、一匹摇马、一台缝纫机，天知道还有什么别的东西。

It looked as though some madman was ripping out the whole of the inside of the house, because now pieces of staircase and bits of the banisters and a whole lot of old floorboards came whistling through the windows. Then there was silence. I waited and waited but not another sound came from within the building. I crossed the road and stood right under the windows and called out, 'Is anybody at home?' There was no answer. In the end it began to get dark so I had to turn away and start walking home. But you can bet your life nothing was going to stop me from hurrying back there again tomorrow morning to see what the next surprise was going to be. When I got back to The Grubber house the next morning, the first thing I noticed was the new door. The dirty old brown door had been taken out and in its place someone had fitted a brand-new red one. The new door was fantastic. It was twice as high as the other one had been and it looked ridiculous. I couldn't begin to imagine who would

看起来好像有个疯子在把房子的整个内部都拆了，因为这时楼梯的碎片、栏杆的碎片和一大堆旧地板从窗户里呼啸而出。 然后是沉默。我等了又等，但大楼里再也没有声音了。 我穿过马路，站在窗户下面喊道:“有人在家吗?”没有人回答。 最后天开始变黑了，所以我不得不转身往回走。 但是你可以用你的生命打赌，没有什么能阻止我明天早上再赶回那里去看看下一个惊喜会是什么。 第二天早上，我回到格鲁伯家，首先注意到的是那扇新门。 那扇又脏又旧的棕色门被拆掉了，有人装上了一扇崭新的红色门。 新门太棒了。 它是另一个的两倍高，看起来很可笑。 我无法想象谁会这么做