dupla valência

No noite de final de período, após terminar todas as reuniões (para mim é sempre uma maratona já sabem, nove vezes uma hora e quarenta e cinco, enfim, excepto o b, inferior a sessenta minutos) ao ir-me deitar, estoirada, deambulei o olhar pelas prateleiras "o que me apetece ler hoje? Algo de levezinho, de descompressão" Guilherme, pois claro. Tirei um volume ao calhas, a terceira história nem de propósito:

"William Leads a Better Life".

"If you go far enough back it was Mr Strong, William's form master, who was responsible for the whole thing. Mr Strong set, for homework, more French than it was convenient for William to learn. It happened that someone had presented William with an electric motor, and the things one can do with an electric motor are endless.
Who would waste the precious hours of a summer evening over French verbs with an electric motor simply crying out to be experimented on? Certainly not William.
It wasn't as if there was any sense in French verbs. They had been deliberately invented by someone with a grudge against the race of boys - someone probably who'd slipped on a concealed slide or got in the way of a snowball or foolishly come within the danger zone of a capapult. Anyway, whoever it was had devised a mean form of revenge by inventing French verbs, and, somehow or other, persuading schoolmasters to adopt them as one of their choicest tortures.
'Well, I never will want to use 'em', said William to his mother when she brought forward the time-honoured argument. 'I don't wanter talk any French folks, an' if they wanter talk to me they can learn English. English's's easy's easy to talk. It's silly havin' other langwidges. I don' see why all the other countries shun't learn English 'stead of us learnin' other langwidges with no sense in' em. English's sense.'
This speech convinced him even more firmly of the foolishness of wasting his precious hours of leisure on such futile study, so he devoted all his time and energy to the electric motor. There was some sense in the electric motor. William spent a very happy evening.
In the morning, however, things somehow seemed different. He lay in bed and considered the matter. There was no doubt that Mr Strong could make himself extremely disagreeable over French verbs.
William remembered that he had threatened to make himself even more disagreeable than usual if William did not know them 'next time'. This was ' next time' and William did not know them. William had not even attempted to learn them. The threats of Mr Strong had seemed feeble, purposeless, contemptible things last night when the electric motor threw its glamour over the whole world. This morning they didn't. They seemed suddenly much more real than the electric motor.
But surely it was possible to circumvent them. William was not the boy to give in weakly to any fate. He heard his mother's door opening, and, assuming an expression of intense suffering, called weakly, 'Mother.' Mrs Brown entered the room fully dressed.
'Aren't you up yet, William?' she said. 'Be quick or oyu'll be late for school.'
William intensified yet further his expression of suffering.
'I don't think I feel quite well enough to go to school this morning, mother, dear,' he said faintly.
Mrs Brown looked distressed. He had employed the ruse countless times before, but it never failed of its effect upon Mrs Brown. The only drawback was that Mr Brown, who was still about the house, was of a less trustful and compassionate nature.
Mrs Brown smoothed his pillow. 'Poor little boy,' she said tenderly, 'where is the pain?'
'All over,' said William, playing for safety.
'Dear! dear!' said Mrs Brown, much perturbed, as she left the room.'I'll just go and fetch the thermometer'.
William disliked the thermometer. It was a soulless, unsympathetic thing. Sometimes, of course, a hot-water bottle, judiciously placed, would enlist its help, but that was not always easy to arrange.

(continuará)