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When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and aldermen, this arrangement created some little dissatisfaction. On the first of the year they mailed her a tax notice. February came, and there was no reply. They wrote her a formal letter, asking her to call at the sheriff's office at her convenience. A week later the mayor wrote her himself, offering to call or to send his car for her, and received in reply a note on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded ink, to the effect that she no longer went out at all. The tax notice was also enclosed, without comment.
到了第二代人，他們當上了鎮長和議員，思想更加前衛，便對這種免稅約定產生了一絲不滿。那年元旦，他們寄給她一張納稅通知單，可是到了二月，依然沒有回信。他們給她發了一封公函，要她方便時到鎮治安辦公室去一趟。一周后，鎮長親自書函一封給她，表示愿意登門拜訪，或派車接她；鎮長得到的回信卻是一張便條，字是寫在一張古香古色的信箋土，書法流利，字跡纖細，墨跡已干，大意是說，她根本不再外出。隨信附還的還有納稅通知單，但不見任何評述。
They called a special meeting of the board of aldermen. A deputation waited upon her, knocked at the door through which no visitor had passed since she ceased giving china-painting lessons eight or ten years earlier. They were admitted by the old Negro into a dim hall from which a stairway mounted into still more shadow. It smelled of dust and disuse--a close, dank smell. The Negro led them into the parlor. It was furnished in heavy, leather-covered furniture. When the Negro opened the blinds of one window, they could see that the leather was cracked; and when they sat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with slow motes in the single sunray. On a tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss Emily's father.
鎮政府官員們召開了參議院委員會特別會議，派了一個代表團拜訪艾米莉。他們敲了敲門。這扇門自從八年或十年前艾米莉停授瓷器彩繪課以來，誰都沒有從這里進出過。接待他們的是那個黑人男仆，他們來到陰暗的門廳，再沿樓梯而上，光線變得更加陰暗了。屋子里發出一股塵封的氣味，陰冷潮濕，密不透氣，這里長久沒有人住了。黑人領著他們來到客廳，客廳里陳設著笨重、包著皮套的家具。黑人打開一扇百葉窗，只見皮套子已經開裂了；他們坐了下來，大腿兩邊，頓時塵粒飛揚，在百葉窗射進的一縷陽光中，緩緩旋轉著。壁爐前是一張早已失去了昔日的光澤的畫架；畫架上屹立著艾米莉父親的炭筆畫像。
They rose when she entered--a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand.
代表團成員站了起來，原來進來一個人——一個身材矮小，但腰圓體胖的女人，她身著黑衫，細長的金鏈直垂腰部，最后插入腰帶里；她撐在烏木拐杖上，杖頭鑲金早已失去了昔日的光澤。她骨架又矮又小，也許正因如此，要是落在別的女人身上，那種胖就是豐滿，而落在她身上，就顯得臃腫。她看上去腫脹發白，就好像長期浸泡在死水中的死尸一般。當客人說明來意時，她的那兩只眼睛不停地轉悠著，一會兒瞧瞧這張面孔，一會兒看看那張臉蛋，那眼睛啊，都深陷在臉隆起的贅肉里了，就像掐在生面團中的兩個小煤球。
