1. The Cyclone

Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer’s wife. Their house was small, for the lumber |потому что строительный лес| to build it had to be carried |надо было везти| by wagon many miles. There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty looking cookstove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner, and Dorothy a little bed in another corner. There was no garret |чердака| at all, and no cellar |подвала| — except a small hole dug in the ground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family could go in case one of those great whirlwinds |смерчей| arose, mighty enough to crush any building in its path. It was reached by a trap door |люк| in the middle of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole.

When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep |нарушал широкий простор| of flat country that reached to the edge of the sky in all directions. The sun had baked the plowed |запек вспаханную| land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same gray color to be seen |которые можно увидеть| everywhere. Once the house had been painted |был покрашен|, but the sun blistered |обожгло| the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the house was as dull and gray as everything else.

When Aunt Em came there to live she was a young, pretty wife. The sun and wind had changed her, too. They had taken the sparkle from her eyes and left them a sober gray |скучным и серым. Буквально sober — трезвый|; they had taken the red from her cheeks and lips, and they were gray also. She was thin and gaunt |изможденная|, and never smiled now. When Dorothy, who was an orphan |сирота|, first came to her, Aunt Em had been so startled |так была поражена| by the child’s laughter that she would scream and press her hand upon her heart whenever Dorothy’s merry |радостный| voice reached her ears; and she still looked at the little girl with wonder that she could find anything to laugh at |над чем можно посмеяться|.

Uncle Henry never laughed. He worked hard from morning till night and did not know what joy was. He was gray also, from his long beard to his rough boots, and he looked stern and solemn |сурово и торжественно|, and rarely spoke.