SHORT STORY BY O’HENRY The Princess And The Puma Đây là một serries truyện ngắn anh ngữ nổi tiếng với những từ vựng quen thuộc. Nhằm giúp các em và các bạn yêu thich tiếng anh luyện tập và củng cố thêm kỹ năng đọc tiếng anh | SHORT STORY BY O HENRY The Princess And The Puma There had to be a king and queen of course. The king was a terrible old man who wore six-shooters and spurs and shouted in such a tremendous voice that the rattlers on the prairie would run into their holes under the prickly pear. Before there was a royal family they called the man Whispering Ben. When he came to own 50 000 acres of land and more cattle than he could count they called him O Donnell the Cattle King. The queen had been a Mexican girl from Laredo. She made a good mild Colorado-claro wife and even succeeded in teaching Ben to modify his voice sufficiently while in the house to keep the dishes from being broken. When Ben got to be king she would sit on the gallery of Espinosa Ranch and weave rush mats. When wealth became so irresistible and oppressive that upholstered chairs and a centre table were brought down from San Antone in the wagons she bowed her smooth dark head and shared the fate of the Danae. To avoid lese-majeste you have been presented first to the king and queen. They do not enter the story which might be called The Chronicle of the Princess the Happy Thought and the Lion that Bungled his Job. Josefa O Donnell was the surviving daughter the princess. From her mother she inherited warmth of nature and a dusky semi-tropic beauty. From Ben O Donnell the royal she acquired a store of intrepidity common sense and the faculty of ruling. The combination was one worth going miles to see. Josefa while riding her pony at a gallop could put five out of six bullets through a tomato-can swinging at the end of a string. She could play for hours with a white kitten she owned dressing it in all manner of absurd clothes. Scorning a pencil she could tell you out of her head what 1545 two-year-olds would bring on the hoof at per head. Roughly speaking the Espinosa Ranch is forty miles long and thirty broad--but mostly leased land. Josefa on her pony had prospected over every mile of it. Every cowpuncher
