Learn English Through Story✨The Ambitious Guest✨ level2✨Audiobook✨Improve Your English✨Subtitle

A family lives happily in a dangerous spot high in the White Mountains, where they frequently receive travelers due to their home being near an important road. They offer kindness and hospitality to all who stop at their door, often hosting strangers overnight when the weather is severe.

One December evening, a young man arrives at their door, seeking shelter from the bitter wind. As he settles by the fire, a loud sound like heavy footsteps is heard outside, which the father explains is merely the mountain 'shaking its head' and dislodging large stones. He reveals he has built a safe hiding place for such events.

The young traveler, usually reserved, surprisingly shares his deepest secret with the family: his ambition to be famous and remembered after death, desiring a 'monument' to his life. He feels he cannot die until he has achieved his destiny.

The oldest daughter, shyly, suggests that simply being happy is more important than being remembered. The father, however, contemplates the young man's words, imagining a simpler life in the valley with a modest monument to an honest life. The young man reiterates that it's human nature to desire remembrance. The grandmother then shares her own secret: the fear of not being buried in her best, handmade funeral clothes, highlighting a different kind of 'monument'.

As the young man reflects on how people face anonymous death, a thunderous roar shakes the house. The family, realizing it's a massive mountain slide, rushes to their hidden sanctuary. The slide miraculously splits just before reaching their home, leaving it untouched while everything else in its path is destroyed.

The next morning, the house stands as if nothing happened, its fire still burning. Though rumors circulate about a stranger being with the family that night, the young traveler's identity and fate remain unknown, his body never found, leaving his ambition for a 'monument' unfulfilled.