Mr. Popper’s Penguins（Ⅺ）波普先生的企鵝 （十一）

輪到最后一場演出的時(shí)候，波普先生弄錯(cuò)了場地，結(jié)果引發(fā)了一場混亂，他和企鵝們都被關(guān)進(jìn)了警察局。從南極回來的杜雷克上將解救了他們。杜雷克上將提議將波普先生的這些企鵝帶到北極，而一位電影公司的老板克雷恩也找到了波普先生，他愿意出一大筆錢來拍一部以這些企鵝為題材的電影。

“Better consider， Mr. Popper，” said the Admiral. “Ican’t offer you anything like that.”

“You say those men at the North Pole get lonelybecause there are no penguins？” asked Mr. Popper.“Very lonely，” said the Admiral.“But if there were penguins up there， mightn’t thepolar bears eat them？”

“Oh， 1）ordinary penguins， yes，” said the Admiral2）judiciously， “but not such highly-trained birds as yours，Mr. Popper. They could outwit any polar bear， I guess.”

It was now Mr. Klein’s turn to speak.

“In every moving picture house in America littlechildren would have the pleasure of seeing stories acted by the Popper Performing Penguins，” he said.

“Of course if we succeeded in establishing the breedat the North Pole，” said the Admiral， “the name mighthave to be changed a little. I imagine that hundreds ofyears from now scientists would be calling them thePopper Arctic Penguins.”

Mr. Popper was silent for a moment.

“Gentlemen，” he said， “I want to thank you both. I’llgive you my decision tomorrow.”

1） ordinary adj. 平常的

2） judiciously adv. 明斷地

“你好好想想吧，波普先生，”上將說，“我沒法給你那么好的東西。（剩余294字）