本集演播：槑贰 

后期：荆溪

英文对照文本在最底下，请往下拉到底。

第12章 科迪的一些事情

一连好几个晚上，科迪都待在矿井里。他和爸爸让彼得森太太也知道了这个秘密。其他矿工的妻子也许不好说，但他们知道，妈妈一定会对此守口如瓶。

但是科迪没告诉她自己每天晚上都待在井下，有一部分也是为了挣钱给她买条新的红裙子。

彼得森太太真是个和蔼可亲的好妈妈！当妈妈的多多少少都和蔼可亲，但彼得森太太呀，比所有妈妈都要和蔼可亲。她把那间安在高高的山坡上的寒酸小屋打理得像天堂一样舒服，等着科迪父子俩从枯燥乏味的地底下钻出来回家去。他们爷儿俩都在这地底下干活呢。彼得森太太拥抱彼得和科迪的时候呀，我怀疑他们的高兴劲儿比公主被祖奶奶拥在怀里时更甚。说真的，她的双手大而有力，很是粗糙，但这双手是替父子俩操持家务才变成这样的，所以在善良的人眼里，她的双手更为美丽。科迪为了给她买条裙子而努力干活，彼得森太太每天也都忙前忙后，好让他过得舒服一点儿。她的确需要一条裙子过冬，但相比起来，科迪更需要舒舒服服的休息。她和科迪从来都没想过自己为对方付出了多少，要是他们这么想的话，就会把一切都弄糟的。

井里只有科迪一个人的时候，他总是会先干上一两个小时的活儿，顺着格鲁普提到的那条通往原来住所的矿脉往下挖。接着，他会展开一番侦察。为了完成侦察，或者说为了返回的时候比第一次顺利，他带了一大团细细的绳子。妈妈经常跟科迪讲小矮人的传说，这一招就是从小矮人身上学到的。这倒不是说小矮人曾用过线团——抱歉我跑题了——不过其中的道理就跟用鹅卵石一个样儿。他把绳子的一头系在自己的镐上，那镐可不比一只锚差。然后，他一边拿着线团往前走，一边把绳子松开，摸黑穿过地精地盘上那些个天然形成的通路。地精把各式各样的洞穴称为房子，

头一两天晚上，科迪没遇到什么值得记下来的事儿，只窥到一点儿他们在“房子”里的日常生活。之前提到的那个暂时挡住洪水的计划，科迪一点儿都没觉察。但是，我想是在第三或第四天晚上，他终于发现地精当中有一群最好的工兵和矿工正在努力干活，从某种程度来说，科迪正是循着他们弄出的声响才发现这事儿的。

接着怎么样了呢？

他躲在那儿观察，每时每刻都冒着被发现的巨大风险，不过他没有陷入这一险境。他一次又一次匆忙往回撤，由于他顺着绳子往回跑的时候还得把它收起来，事情就变得更难了。他倒不是怕那些个地精，而是怕他们发现有人监视他们，那样一来，自己可能就没法找出想知道的答案了。有时候，他跑得太急了，为了“躲开那些地精”，都没时间把绳子缠起来，所以清晨到家的时候，绳子乱作一团，似乎都没什么希望解开。但是每当科迪美美地睡了一觉之后，哪怕只睡了一小会儿，他总会发现母亲又把绳子整理停当了。绳子好端端地绕了起来，只要他需要，马上就能派上用场！

“我想不出你是怎么做到的，妈妈，”他说。

“顺着绳子就行，”她会回答——“就跟你在矿井地下一样。”她总是不多说什么，但是她越不善言辞，就越是心灵手巧；而且她说得越少，科迪就越相信她说的话。不过，他还是没发现地精矿工到底要干什么。

CHAPTER 12 A Short Chapter About Curdie

Curdie spent many nights in the mine. His father and he had taken Mrs. Peterson into the secret, for they knew mother could hold her tongue, which was more than could be said of all the miners' wives.

But Curdie did not tell her that every night he spent in the mine, part of it went in earning a new red petticoat for her.

Mrs. Peterson was such a nice good mother! All mothers are nice and good more or less, but Mrs. Peterson was nice and good all more and no less. She made and kept a little heaven in that poor cottage on the high hillside | for her husband and son to go home | to out of the low and rather dreary earth in which they worked. I doubt if the princess was very much happier even in the arms of her huge great-grandmother than Peter and Curdie were in the arms of Mrs. Peterson. True, her hands were hard and chapped and large, but it was with work for them; and therefore, in the sight of the angels, her hands were so much the more beautiful. And if Curdie worked hard to get her a petticoat, she worked hard every day to get him comforts which he would have missed much more than she would a new petticoat even in winter. Not that she and Curdie ever thought of how much they worked for each other: that would have spoiled everything.

When left alone in the mine Curdie always worked on for an hour or two at first, following the lode which, according to Glump, would lead at last into the deserted habitation. After that, he would set out on a reconnoitring expedition. In order to manage this, or rather the return from it, better than the first time, he had bought a huge ball of fine string, having learned the trick from Hop-o'-my-Thumb, whose history his mother had often told him. Not that Hop-o'-my-Thumb had ever used a ball of string—I should be sorry to be supposed so far out in my classics—but the principle was the same as that of the pebbles. The end of this string he fastened to his pickaxe, which figured no bad anchor, and then, with the ball in his hand, unrolling it as he went, set out in the dark through the natural gangs of the goblins' territory. The first night or two he came upon nothing worth remembering; saw only a little of the home-life of the cobs in the various caves they called houses; failed in coming upon anything to cast light upon the foregoing design which kept the inundation for the present in the background. But at length, I think on the third or fourth night, he found, partly guided by the noise of their implements, a company of evidently the best sappers and miners amongst them, hard at work. What were they about? It could not well be the inundation, seeing that had in the meantime been postponed to something else. Then what was it? He lurked and watched, every now and then in the greatest risk of being detected, but without success. He had again and again to retreat in haste, a proceeding rendered the more difficult that he had to gather up his string as he returned upon its course. It was not that he was afraid of the goblins, but that he was afraid of their finding out that they were watched, which might have prevented the discovery at which he aimed. Sometimes his haste had to be such that, when he reached home towards morning, his string, for lack of time to wind it up as he 'dodged the cobs', would be in what seemed most hopeless entanglement; but after a good sleep, though a short one, he always found his mother had got it right again. There it was, wound in a most respectable ball, ready for use the moment he should want it!

'I can't think how you do it, mother,' he would say.

'I follow the thread,' she would answer—'just as you do in the mine.' She never had more to say about it; but the less clever she was with her words, the more clever she was with her hands; and the less his mother said, the more Curdie believed she had to say. But still he had made no discovery as to what the goblin miners were about.