英文童话故事:迪克．惠廷顿和猫

【英文原文】

摘要：迪克•惠廷顿确有其人。他年轻时去伦敦，靠买卖布匹发了财。他后来当上了伦敦市长，连国王缺钱花时都要向他借。他死于1423年，死时把所有的遗产都捐给了慈善机构。

Dick Whittington was a real person living in England about six hundred years ago. He went to London when he was young and made a fortune there by buying and selling cloth. He became Lord Mayor of London, and lent large sums of money to the king. He died in 1423, leaving all his money as a gift to help the poor.

According to the stories, Dick Whittington was a poor orphan who went to London to seek his fortune because he had heard that its streets were paved with gold. In London he found a job helping the cook of a rich merchant. The merchant was sending a ship full of goods to Barbary in North Africa, and told his employees that each of them could send one thing in the ship to be sold along with the merchant’s goods. The only thing Dick Whittington owned was a cat, so he sent the cat.

Meanwhile, he was badly treated by the cook and he decided to leave London. As he was walking away from London, on his way back home, he heard the Bow bells ringing and they seemed to say to him,
Turn again, Whittington,
Lord Mayor of London.

Dick turned and went back. Soon the ship returned, and Dick learned that his cat had been sold for a great price because Barbary was full of rats and needed cats to kill them. This started Dick on the road to wealth.