《英语世界》 2009年第11期Come fishing？Janes Lincoln.docVIP

Come fishing？ James Lincoln John settled himself in the seat of the carriage as the train gathered speed.Well, he thought, that ends that. Secretly, he was rather glad it was all over. For a while ,the experience had been exhilarating, but as the days had passed, he had found the feeling of being a ladies’ man① rather forced. John’s thoughts wandered back to the irksome everyday round of muddle and arguments that had led up to his experience-what was to have been his great adventure. First, and this rankled most, there had been the endless mess that his wife called house keeping. Nothing was ever in its right place②in the Morrison household③. To John’s systematic, ordered mind, living in conditions of hectic chaos was nothing short of torture④. Then there had been the inevitable arguments which either ended by his going out alone for the evening , or by a frigid truce being observed ⑤until either John or Helen⑥would go to bed from sheer boredom. He recollected how, as things progressed to their disordered worst, the germ of an idea had been born in his brain⑦; and how the idea had taken firm root, so that starting as a possibility it had become a firm intention, and later still an all-consuming obsession⑧. The plan had been quite simple, for actually there was no real plan. All he had to do was to walk out of the house one morning at the usual time, catch a train to Green Head⑨and forget to come home for a week or two He remembered the morning he had put his plan into action. Breakfast as usual had been a dishevelled affair of burnt toast and hastily gulped tea. He had noticed a rather detached, remote air about his wife, and had wondered fleetingly if somehow she had divined his intentions. Had she found the tidy little wad of notes in his wallet? But no,that was hardly likely. One thing about Helen, she didn’t pry. Nor was she,he had reflected , at all suspicious, as were so many wives⑩. John’s reflections stirred a guilty twinge of conscience in him. Not that he