I. Modal-predicative structures.

Analyse modal-predicative structures in bold type fromExtract VII from S.W.Maugham’s “The Razor’s Edge” (p.88-89):

I went to one or two of his parties myself and now and again I dropped in at Claridge's at six o'clock. I found Isabel surrounded by strapping young men in beautiful clothes who were in the Household Brigade or by elegant young men in less beautiful clothes from the Foreign Office.

It was on one of these occasions that she drew me aside.

"I want to ask you something," she said. "Do you remember that evening we went to a drugstore and had an ice-cream soda?"

"Perfectly."

"You were very nice and helpful then. Will you be nice and helpful again?"

"I'll do my best."

"I want to talk to you about something. Couldn't we lunch one day?"

"Almost any day you like."

"Somewhere quiet."

"What d'you say to driving down to Hampton Court and lunching there? The gardens should be at their best just now and you could see Queen Elizabeth's bed."

The notion suited her and we fixed a day. But when the day came the weather, which had been fine and warm, broke; the sky was grey and a drizzling rain was falling. I called up and asked her if she wouldn't prefer to lunch in town.

"We shouldn't be able to sit in the gardens and the pictures will be so dark, we shan't see a thing."

"I’ve sat in lots of gardens and I'm fed to the teeth with old masters. Let's go anyway."

"All right."

I fetched her and we drove down. I knew a small hotel where one ate tolerably and we went straight there. On the way Isabel talked with her usual vivacity of the parties she had been to and the people she had met. She had been enjoying herself, but her comments on the various acquaintances she had made suggested to me that she had shrewdness and a quick eye for the absurd. The bad weather kept visitors away and we were the only occupants of the dining-room. The hotel specialized in homely English fare and we had a cut off a leg of excellent lamb with

green peas and new potatoes and a deep-dish apple pie with Devonshire cream to follow. With a tankard of pale ale it made an excellent lunch, When we had finished I suggested that we should go into the empty coffee-room where there were armchairs in which we could sit in comfort. It was chilly in there, but the fire was laid, so I put a match to it. The flames made the dingy room more companionable.

"That's that," I said. "Now tell me what you want to talk to me about."

"It's the same as last time," she chuckled. "Larry."

"So I guessed."

"You know that we've broken off our engagement."

"Elliott told me."

"Mamma's relieved and he's delighted."

She hesitated for a moment and then embarked upon the account of her talk with Larry of which I have done my best faithfully to inform the reader. It may surprise the reader that she should have chosen to tell so much to someone whom she knew so little. I don't suppose I had seen her a dozen times and, except for that one occasion at the drugstore, never alone. It did not surprise me. For one thing, as any writer will tell you, people do tell a writer things that they don't tell others. I don't know why, unless it is that having read one or two of his books they feel on peculiarly intimate terms with him; or it may be that they dramatize themselves and, seeing themselves as it were as characters in a novel, are ready to be as open with him as they imagine the characters of his invention are. And I think that Isabel felt that I liked Larry and her, and that their youth touched me, and that I was sympathetic to their distresses. She could not expect to find a friendly listener in Elliott who was disinclined totrouble himself with a young man who had spurned the best chance a young man ever had of getting into society. Nor could her mother help her. Mrs. Bradley had high principles and common sense. Her common sense assured her that if you wanted to get on in this world you must accept its conventions, and not to do what everybody else did clearly pointed to instability. Her high principles led her to believe that a man's duty was to go to work in a business where by energy and initiative he had a chance of earning enough money to keep his wife and family in accordance with the standards of his station, give his sons such an education as would enable them on reaching man's estate to make an honest living, and on his death leave his widow adequately provided for.

II Multi-word-verbs: health and fitness

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 846