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I decided that between now and Christmas I must do nothing, absolutely nothing, to reveal the slightest hint of my terrible knowledge. I must avoid the least word that might reveal my possession of her secret. Nothing must deny her the happiness of seeing me completely amazed on Christmas day.
我决定，在现在和圣诞节之前这段时间里，我必须不动声色，绝对不可露出一点蛛丝马迹暗示我已令人讨厌地知道了此事。我必须谨言慎行，不能让她知道我已掌握了她的秘密。必须想尽一切办法让她在圣诞节那天享受到看见我极为惊讶时的快乐。
In the privacy of my bedroom I began composing and testing exclamations of delight: "Wow!" "A bike with balloon tires! I don't believe it!" "I'm the luckiest boy alive!" And so on. They all owed a lot to movies in which boys like Mickey Rooney had seen their wildest dreams come true. I soon realized that, with my lack of acting talent, all of them were going to sound false at the critical moment when I wanted to cry out my love spontaneously from the heart. Maybe it would be better to say nothing but appear to be shocked into such deep pleasure that speech had escaped me. I wasn't sure, though. I'd seen speechless gratitude in the movies too, and it never really worked until the actors managed to cry a few quiet tears. I doubted I could cry on cue, so I began thinking about other expressions of speechless amazement. In front of a hand-held mirror in my bedroom I tried the whole range of expressions; mouth open and eyes wide; hands slapped firmly against both cheeks to keep the jaw from falling off; ear-to-ear grin with all teeth fully exposed while hugging myself with both arms. These and more I practiced for several days without acquiring confidence in any of them. I decided to wait until Christmas morning and see if anything came naturally...
在我不受干扰的卧室里，我开始构思并试验种种表示喜悦的惊叫：“哇噢！”“一辆低压轮胎的自行车！我真不敢相信！”“我是世界上最最幸运的男孩！”等等。这些话都大大归功于比如由米基·鲁尼主演的电影，片中男孩子看到他们最不着边际的梦想得以实现时都这么说。我很快便意识到，因为我缺乏演戏的天才，在我不由自主地想大声喊出发自肺腑的爱时，所有这些话听上去都会显得很虚假。或许最好是什么也不说，而是看上去惊喜得连话也说不出来了。不过，我也没有把握。我在电影里也看到过说不出话来的感激，但直到演员们设法哭出几滴无声的眼泪时才真正起到作用。我怀疑自己能否适时地哭出来，于是便开始思考别的表示无言惊讶的方式。在卧室里，我手拿镜子，试着做出各种各样的表情，嘴巴张得大大的，眼睛瞪得圆圆的；双手猛地捂住脸颊使下巴不至于落下来，双臂抱着自己，咧开嘴大笑，把全部牙齿都露出来。这些动作和一些别的动作我练了好几天，但对任何一个动作都没有把握。我决定等到圣诞节早晨再说，看能不能自然而然地做出什么动作来 ……
