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儿童英语读物 The Dinosaur Mystery CHAPTER 7 The Aldens Keep a Secret

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“No, the dinosaur1 bones are still missing, but come to the Dino World opening next Tuesday,” Jessie told a caller. She put down the phone. “Whew, that phone hasn’t stopped ringing for an hour. I know it’s awful about the theft, but now people are so curious about Dino World. More people than ever will come.”

“I hope the police and the security guards find the bones soon,” Violet said. “It would be terrible if the dinosaur wasn’t all put together by next week.”

Working together, the girls quickly finished filing Dr. Pettibone’s bills, letters, and receipts. When they were nearly done, Violet spotted2 an envelope marked: “Montana Fossil Conference — travel receipts.”

“I wonder if Dr. Pettibone wanted us to file these, too,” Jessie said. She opened the envelope and several pieces of paper fell out.

“What’s the matter, Jessie?” Violet asked.

“Look at this. It’s a hotel receipt from the Hotel Warwick right here in town. And this taxi slip shows that Dr. Pettibone took a taxi ride from the hotel to here Sunday night. I thought that was when he was in Montana at the fossil conference! There’s no airline ticket receipt either.”

Henry and Violet rushed over to see what Jessie was reading.

“Didn’t Pete say he just got back?” Henry asked in a quiet voice.

“According to this,” Jessie whispered, “Dr. Pettibone stayed at the hotel for three days and checked out Sunday evening.”

“What should we do with these receipts, Jessie?” Violet asked.

“Nothing,” Jessie answered. “I’ll just leave this envelope here. I don’t want Dr. Pettibone to think we were snooping. He won’t let us work here anymore if we upset him.” She put the envelope back where she had found it, then knocked on the fossil lab door. “We’re going to lunch, Dr. Pettibone,” she called.

The door opened, and Dr. Pettibone stepped out.

“Here are your messages.” Jessie handed Dr. Pettibone the list of phone calls she had answered. “And we did your filing, too.”

Dr. Pettibone looked pleased when he saw how much work the Aldens had finished. When he spotted the envelope of travel receipts, he walked over, picked it up, and stuffed it into his lab coat pocket.

“Good, good,” he said, smiling a little for the first time. He looked over Violet’s neat list of fossil labels. “I couldn’t have done this better myself. Maybe this afternoon you can help me put them on my specimens3. Now off you go.”

The children were nearly out the door when Henry called out to Dr. Pettibone. “Could you use Benny and Soo Lee this afternoon, too? They’re awfully4 good at sorting out things. Or whatever else you need.” Dr. Pettibone’s smile disappeared. “No! They’re much too young. Some of these fossil bones can shatter just by being touched.”

Soo Lee and Benny were eating lunch with Mr. Diggs when the older children arrived.

“What have you been up to?” Henry asked.

Benny took a big gulp5 of milk before he answered Henry. “We saw every kind of bug6 in the whole wide world.”

“Even bugs7 from Korea,” Soo Lee said proudly. “Butterflies, too.”

“And what have you folks been up to?” Mr. Diggs wanted to know. “Did Dr. Pettibone teach you a lot about fossils this morning?”

Henry shook his head. “I learned a lot about how to dump things in the construction Dumpster.”

Mr. Diggs looked at Jessie and Violet. “That’s too bad. I’d hoped Titus would give you something more interesting to do.”

Violet shook her head. “I wrote fossil labels. Dr. Pettibone said maybe we could put my labels on some fossils this afternoon. I can’t wait to see them.”

Mr. Diggs looked puzzled. “You mean you didn’t see any fossils in the lab?”

“Why, no, not yet,” Violet answered. “We stayed in the outside office, not in the fossil lab.”

Jessie broke in. “Dr. Pettibone worked in there by himself with the door locked. Violet wrote up labels, and I filed and answered the phone.”

Now Mr. Diggs looked upset. “Goodness, that’s not what Emma and I had in mind when we invited you for a visit. We thought you could work with some of the specimens and have some fun at the same time.”

Jessie shrugged8. “We did give Dr. Pettibone a hand, but it’s not exactly fun yet. Not that we mind. We like helping9 someone important like Dr. Pettibone.” Jessie stopped talking and took a deep breath. “I guess a lot of work piled up while he was in Montana at his fossil conference. Did he have a good time there?”

Mr. Diggs smiled. “I imagine he did, though there hasn’t been a minute to discuss the conference with Titus what with all the excitement about the missing bones.”

Benny noticed Henry, Jessie, and Violet all looking at each other in an odd way. “What’s the matter, Jessie? You’ve got a funny look on your face.”

“Nothing,” Jessie said. “I guess I’ll have my sandwich now.”

“Me, too,” Violet said quietly.

“Me, three,” Henry added without looking directly at Benny or Soo Lee or Mr. Diggs.

An hour later, the older Aldens headed back to Dr. Pettibone’s office.

“I couldn’t bring myself to say anything about the hotel receipts we found,” Jessie said, “I didn’t want to make trouble for Dr. Pettibone or upset Mr. Diggs. Now I’m not sure if we did the right thing.”

The children were just about to unlock the elevator doors with Mr. Diggs’s key when the doors opened. Mrs. Diggs stepped out, carrying two bags of groceries.

“Hi, Mrs. Diggs,” Jessie said. “We’re just on our way up to see Dr. Pettibone. He said maybe this afternoon he’ll let us help him label some of his fossils for the opening.”

Mrs. Diggs stopped. “Well, I do hope you get a chance. Why, I was ten years old, Violet’s exact age, when I started my fossil collection. My first one was a small snail10 shell fossil. I still have it.” Mrs. Diggs suddenly got an odd expression on her face, as if she was about to say something but wasn’t sure whether she should.

“Is everything okay, Mrs. Diggs?” Henry asked. “Let us give you a hand with these groceries.”

Mrs. Diggs shook her head. “No. I just have some lightweight things in the bags. I was just wondering about something. I’ve been out in the neighborhood running a lot of errands. And do you know, I didn’t see a single Dino World poster, not even on the public events bulletin board right outside the museum?”

“What?” the three Aldens said at the same time.

“We put up dozens of posters all over,” Jessie explained. “On poles, on the grocery store bulletin board, in store windows — every space we could find.”

“Well, I looked but didn’t see a single one,” Mrs. Diggs said. “It’s just the oddest thing. The grocery store manager, then the woman who runs the laundromat, both told me a woman came in and said she wanted the poster as a souvenir. I didn’t have time to look anyplace else since I didn’t know exactly where you had put up the posters.”

“That’s awful,” Jessie said. “Here’s another strange thing. All those posters Mr. Diggs left in the planetarium11 for us wound up in a trash can.”

“A trash can!” Mrs. Diggs cried.

“Luckily I spotted them before they went into the Dumpster,” Henry explained. “Nobody seemed to know how they got mixed up in the trash.”

Mrs. Diggs picked up the groceries. “Everything is so topsy-turvy, I must say. I’ll be so glad when we find those bones and when Dino World finally opens. Usually the Pickering Museum is as quiet as the library.”

“Whoa!” Henry suddenly cried out when he felt the elevator doors move when he was leaning against one of them. “Somebody must be getting off.”

When Henry stepped away, the doors slid open. There was Dr. Pettibone, huddled12 over a large wooden crate13. With his back to the doors, he was trying to pull the heavy crate out of the elevator with one hand while holding down the “Open” door button with the other.

“Titus!” Mrs. Diggs cried.

Dr. Pettibone turned around to face Mrs. Diggs and the Aldens. Before he could answer Mrs. Diggs, the elevator shut. The next thing everyone saw was the elevator arrow change from “Down” to “Up.”

Dr. Pettibone and his crate were gone.


点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 dinosaur xuSxp     
n.恐龙
参考例句:
  • Are you trying to tell me that David was attacked by a dinosaur?你是想要告诉我大卫被一支恐龙所攻击?
  • He stared at the faithful miniature of the dinosaur.他凝视著精确的恐龙缩小模型。
2 spotted 7FEyj     
adj.有斑点的,斑纹的,弄污了的
参考例句:
  • The milkman selected the spotted cows,from among a herd of two hundred.牛奶商从一群200头牛中选出有斑点的牛。
  • Sam's shop stocks short spotted socks.山姆的商店屯积了有斑点的短袜。
3 specimens 91fc365099a256001af897127174fcce     
n.样品( specimen的名词复数 );范例;(化验的)抽样;某种类型的人
参考例句:
  • Astronauts have brought back specimens of rock from the moon. 宇航员从月球带回了岩石标本。
  • The traveler brought back some specimens of the rocks from the mountains. 那位旅行者从山上带回了一些岩石标本。 来自《简明英汉词典》
4 awfully MPkym     
adv.可怕地,非常地,极端地
参考例句:
  • Agriculture was awfully neglected in the past.过去农业遭到严重忽视。
  • I've been feeling awfully bad about it.对这我一直感到很难受。
5 gulp yQ0z6     
vt.吞咽,大口地吸(气);vi.哽住;n.吞咽
参考例句:
  • She took down the tablets in one gulp.她把那些药片一口吞了下去。
  • Don't gulp your food,chew it before you swallow it.吃东西不要狼吞虎咽,要嚼碎了再咽下去。
6 bug 5skzf     
n.虫子;故障;窃听器;vt.纠缠;装窃听器
参考例句:
  • There is a bug in the system.系统出了故障。
  • The bird caught a bug on the fly.那鸟在飞行中捉住了一只昆虫。
7 bugs e3255bae220613022d67e26d2e4fa689     
adj.疯狂的,发疯的n.窃听器( bug的名词复数 );病菌;虫子;[计算机](制作软件程序所产生的意料不到的)错误
参考例句:
  • All programs have bugs and need endless refinement. 所有的程序都有漏洞,都需要不断改进。 来自《简明英汉词典》
  • The sacks of rice were swarming with bugs. 一袋袋的米里长满了虫子。 来自《简明英汉词典》
8 shrugged 497904474a48f991a3d1961b0476ebce     
vt.耸肩(shrug的过去式与过去分词形式)
参考例句:
  • Sam shrugged and said nothing. 萨姆耸耸肩膀,什么也没说。
  • She shrugged, feigning nonchalance. 她耸耸肩,装出一副无所谓的样子。 来自《简明英汉词典》
9 helping 2rGzDc     
n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的,辅助的
参考例句:
  • The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
  • By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。
10 snail 8xcwS     
n.蜗牛
参考例句:
  • Snail is a small plant-eating creature with a soft body.蜗牛是一种软体草食动物。
  • Time moved at a snail's pace before the holidays.放假前的时间过得很慢。
11 planetarium y20z0     
n.天文馆;天象仪
参考例句:
  • The planetarium staff also prepared talks for radio broadcast.天文馆的工作人员还要准备讲稿给电台广播。
  • It landed in a shallow basin fifty yards from the planetarium.它降落在离天文馆五十码处的一个浅盆地中。
12 huddled 39b87f9ca342d61fe478b5034beb4139     
挤在一起(huddle的过去式与过去分词形式)
参考例句:
  • We huddled together for warmth. 我们挤在一块取暖。
  • We huddled together to keep warm. 我们挤在一起来保暖。
13 crate 6o1zH     
vt.(up)把…装入箱中;n.板条箱,装货箱
参考例句:
  • We broke open the crate with a blow from the chopper.我们用斧头一敲就打开了板条箱。
  • The workers tightly packed the goods in the crate.工人们把货物严紧地包装在箱子里。
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