A Start In Life

by R. Suckow

D

aisy held on as the car skidded going down the short clay hill. Elmer didn't bother with chains. He was too used to the roads. But her eyes brightened with scared excitement. When they were down, and Elmer slowed up going along the tracks in the deep wet grass that led to the main road, she looked back, holding on her hat with her small scrawny hand.

            Just down this little hill—and home was gone. The big car, the feel of her telescope on the floor under her feet, the fact that she was going out of the country, changed the looks of every thing. She saw it all now.

            Dunkels' house stood on one side of the road. A closed-up white house. The windows stared blank and cold between the old shutters. There was a chair with a broken straw seat under the fruit trees. The Dunkels were old Catholic people who seldom went anywhere. In the front yard was a clump of old pines, the rough brown trunks wet, the green branches, dark and shining, heavy with rain, the ground underneath mournfully sodden and black.

            The pasture on the other side. The green grass, lush, wet and cold, and the outcroppings of limestone that held little pools of rain water in all the tiny holes. Beyond, the low hills gloomy with timber against the lowering sky.

            They slid out onto the main road. They bumped over the small wooden bridge above the swollen creek that came from the pasture. Daisy looked down. She saw the little swirls of foam, the long grass that swished with the water, the old rusted tin cans lodged between the rocks.

Notes and exercises:

1.   Read the following words paying attention to the pronunciation of the digraph “ch”. Memorize the spelling.

chain	sandwich	choose	teacher	bachelor
change	chess	spinach	preacher	Norwich
chair	chief	bench	Greenwich	Harwich
branch	chill	trench	achieve	chance

2.   In the following words the sound [dz] is expressed by the combination “dg(e)”. Memorize the spelling of these words:

bridge	hedge	knowledge	budget	lodger	bludgeon
lodge	sledge	cartridge	fidget	drudgery	curmudgeon
edge	judge	porridge	cudgel	judg(e)ment	badger

3.   Mark the pronunciation and spelling of the inflected genitive:

a)       after voiceless consonants the genitive inflection is pronounced as [s]: cat’s, wife’s, Dick’s

b)      after vowels and voiced consonants it is pronounced as [z]: boy’s, man’s, Tom’s

c)       after sibilants the vowels sound in the end of the base is retained: judge’s [dzÙdziz]

d)      in the plural the apostrophe (‘) is added to the word and the pronunciation is not changed: boys’, brothers’, etc.

4.   Word study:

to skid        move or slip sideways (of a car)

scrawny     bony, scraggy: the scrawny neck of a turkey

to swell (swelled, swollen)            to become greater in volume, thickness, or force: wood often swells when wet, the river was swollen with melted snow, his face began to swell up (from toothache), his heart was swelling with pride, (US) he is a swell—a smartly dressed person, What a swell you look in that new suit!, a swell watch, Who are your swell friends?, he took her to a swell dinner party, swell—smart, fashionable

5.   Explain the meaning of the following phrasal verbs and use them in sentences of your own:

to look back, to go back to (to resume), to sit back, to walk back, to step back, to keep back from (the fire), to look back on, to take back, to get back (to return)