Heaven knows(天知道) why the old man had painted her portrait. He didn’t do many; landscapes were more his style. Perhaps it was a reward for her washing his oil-caked(沾满油彩的) paint brushes, a foul(令人作呕的) task that made her hands so rough and red. But she was the paints girl, who ordered his colours in for him because at the weekends she was at Chartwell, his country retreat, on duty. Perhaps that was why she looked sad, as well as rather too glamorised(被美化的), and why she was holding her hands in her lap in that peculiar way(以那种奇特的方式).
天知道这位老人为什么给她画了肖像。他画的肖像不多，风景画更符合他的风格。也许这是对她清洗他沾满油彩的画笔的奖赏——那是一件令人作呕的差事，让她的双手变得粗糙发红。但她是“颜料女孩”，负责替他订购颜料，因为周末她要在他的乡间别墅查特韦尔值班。也许这就是她看起来忧伤、又过于美化的原因，也是她以那种奇特的方式把手放在膝上的原因。
She suspected that she had just been sitting around(闲坐着) when he had the idea. But there certainly wasn’t much idling(闲荡、空转) when one was employed by Mr Churchill. She did four years, covering most of his time as leader of the Opposition(反对党领袖) before, in 1951, he was prime minister again. She spent a good deal of it feeling utterly exhausted and trembling with fear, whenever she smelt that cigar smoke or heard that rumbling voice, that she was going to annoy the great man in some way.(这四年里，她大部分时间都感到筋疲力尽，每当闻到那股雪茄烟味或听到那低沉的声音，就害怕得发抖，生怕自己会在某方面惹恼这位伟人。) She spent much of the rest of it laughing.
她猜想，他产生这个念头时，她只是无所事事地坐在那里。但受雇于丘吉尔先生，肯定没多少空闲时间。她干了四年，涵盖了他担任反对党领袖的大部分时期，直到1951年他再次出任首相。这四年里，她大部分时间都感到筋疲力尽，每当闻到那股雪茄烟味或听到那低沉的声音，就害怕得发抖，生怕自己会在某方面惹恼这位伟人。其余时间，她多半在笑。
When she first joined, in 1947 at the age of 18, she took months working 9 to 5 to sort his papers out. With not a jot of(一点也不) archive training and usually alone, she was faced with hundreds of black tin boxes and thousands of papers in no order, stowed in a perfectly stifling(闷热的、令人窒息的) sub-basement(地下室的下层) right next to the furnace. The only window was under the front step, so she learned to identify famous visitors by their socks. Anthony Eden(安东尼·艾登)’s were pink.
她1947年18岁刚入职时，花了几个月时间朝九晚五地整理他的文件。她毫无档案管理训练，通常独自一人，面对数百个黑色铁皮箱和成千上万份杂乱无章的文件，它们被堆放在一个紧挨着锅炉、闷热得令人窒息的地下室里。唯一的窗户在前门台阶下面，于是她学会了通过袜子来辨认著名访客。安东尼·艾登的袜子是粉色的。