I shall never forget the night, a few years ago, when Marion J. Douglas was a student in one of my adult-education classes. He told us how tragedy had struck at his home, not once, but twice. The first time he had lost his five-year-old daughter. He and his wife thought they couldn’t bear that first loss; but, as he said, “Ten months later, God gave us another little girl and she died in five days.”

This double bereavement was almost too much to bear. “I couldn’t take it,” this father told us. “I couldn’t sleep, eat, rest or relax. My nerves were entirely shaken and my confidence gone.” At last he went to the doctors: one recommended sleeping pills and another recommended a trip, but neither helped. He said, “My body felt as if it was surrounded in a vice(大钳子), and the jaws of the vice were being drawn tighter and tighter.” The tension of grief(悲伤) --- if you have ever been paralyzed(使瘫痪) by sorrow, you know what the meant.

“But thank God, I had one child left --- a four-year-old son. He gave me the solution to the problem. One afternoon as I sat around feeling sorry for myself, he asked, ‘Daddy, will you build a boat for me?’ I was in no mood to build a boat; in fact, I was in no mood to do anything. But my son is a persistent fellow! I had to give in. Building that toy boat took me about three hours. By the time it was finished, I realized that those three hours spent building that boat were first hours of mental relaxation and peace that I had had in months! I realized that it is difficult to worry while you are busy doing something that requires planning and thinking. In my case, building the boat had knocked worry out of the ring. So I determined to keep busy.”

“The following night, I made a list of jobs that ought to be done. Scores of items needed to be repaired. Amazingly, I had made a list of 242 items that needed attention. During the last two years I have completed most of them. I am so busy now that I have no time for worry.”

No time for worry! That is exactly what Winston Churchill said when he was working eighteen hours a day at the height of the war. When he was asked if he worried about his huge responsibilities, he said, “I am too busy. I have no time for worry.”

The underlined word “bereavement” in the second paragraph refers to _________.

Marion felt his body as if it was caught in a vice because _________.

Marion made a list of over 200 items that needed to be repaired because _________.

At the end of the passage, the author wrote about Winston Churchill in order to ________.

D. make it clear how his conclusion was reached

He hated the war so much that he decided to leave the army _____.

   A. for long    B. once in a while

   C. for good    D. once upon a time

She was dancing. My lame grandmother was dancing. I stood in the living room doorway, looking at her beautiful movements, absolutely shocked. She was the pet of the dancing world. And then she’d had her accident and it was all over. I had read that in an old newspaper article.

‘‘So… Your leg? I mean, how did your leg heal (恢复健全)?”

“To tell you the truth — my legs have been well all my life,” she sighed.

“But I don’t understand!” I said, “Your dancing career (事业)… You pretended all these years?”

‘‘Very much so, and for a very good reason.”

She thought for a while and then continued. “We were talking about engagement (订婚) when your grandfather had to go to war. I was so afraid of losing him that the only way I could stay normal was to dance. I put all my energy and time into practicing and I became very good. Critics praised me, the public loved me, but all I could feel was the ache in my heart, not knowing whether the love of my life would ever return. Then one day a letter came. There were only three sentences: ‘I have lost my leg. I am no longer a whole man and now give you back your freedom. It is best you forget about me.’’’

“I made my decision there and then. I traveled away from the city. When I returned I had bought myself a stick. I told everyone I had been in a car crash and that my leg would never completely heal again. My dancing days were over. No one doubted the story — I had learned to limp (一瘸一拐地走) convincingly before I returned home. And I made sure the first person to hear of my accident was a reporter I knew well. Then I traveled to the hospital. They had pushed your grandfather outside in his wheelchair. I took a deep breath, leaned on my stick and limped to him.”

“I showed him newspaper articles of my accident. ‘There is a whole life waiting for us out there! But I am not going to carry you. You are going to walk yourself.’”

“I limped a few steps toward him and showed him what I’d taken out of my pocket. ‘Now show me you are still a man.’ I said. He bent to take his stick from the ground and struggled out of that wheelchair. He managed it on his own and walked to me and never sat in a wheelchair again in his life.”

“What did you show him?” I had to know. Grandma looked at me and smiled. “Two engagement rings, of course. I had bought them the day after he left for the war and I was not going to waste them on any other man.”

1.What does the underlined word “it” in the first paragraph refer to?

2.Which is the correct order of the following events according to the passage?

a. Grandfather lost his leg in the war.

b. Grandmother bought two engagement rings.

c. Grandfather was inspired to stand up on his own.

d. Grandmother pretended she was lame.

e. Grandmother became an excellent dancer.

f. Grandfather had to go to war.

3.Which of the following words can best describe grandmother?

4.What’s the main idea of the passage?

根据各个句子的要求，完成改写或翻译句子。

1.They ______ _______ _______ _______(过着幸福的生活) after the war was over.

2.______ _______ _______ _______(使我们非常满意的是)，they finished the task successfully.

3.I didn’t expect that I would be interviewed by the general manager. (用不定式改写)

I didn’t ______ _________ __________ _________ by the general manager.

4.You can achieve your goal only by working hard. (改写)

Only____________________________________________________________________

5.I met Jenny at school last Friday. (用强调句对划线部分进行强调)

________________________________________________________________________

6.正如谚语所说的，百闻不如一见。（翻译句子）

________________________________________________________________________

It was Saturday. As always, it was a busy one, for “Six days shall you labor and all your work” was taken seriously back then. Outside, Father and Mr. Patrick next door were busy chopping firewood. Inside their own houses, Mother and Mrs. Patrick were engaged in spring cleaning.

Somehow the boys had slipped away to the back lot with their kites. Now, even at the risk of having brother caught to beat carpets, they had sent him to the kitchen for more string(线). It seemed there was  no limit to the heights to which kites would fly today.

My mother looked at the sitting room, its furniture disordered for a thorough sweeping. Again she

cast a look toward the window. “Come on, girls! Let’s take string to the boys and watch them fly the kites a minute.”

On the way we met Mrs. Patric, laughing guiltily as if she were doing something wrong, together with her girls. There never was such a day for flying kites! We played all our fresh string into the boys’ kites and they went up higher and higher. We could hardly distinguish the orange-colored spots of the kites. Now and then we slowly pulled one kite back, watching it dancing up and down in the wind, and finally bringing it down to earth, just for the joy of sending it up again.

Even our fathers dropped their tools and joined us. Our mothers took their turn, laughing like schoolgirls. I think we were all beside ourselves. Parents forgot their duty and their dignity; children forgot their everyday fights and little jealousies. “Perhaps it’s like this in the kingdom of heaven,” I thought confusedly.

It was growing dark before we all walked sleepily back to the housed. I suppose we had some sort of supper. I suppose there must have been surface tidying-up, for the house on Sunday looked clean and orderly enough. The strange thing was, we didn’t mention that day afterward. I felt a little embarrassed. Surely none of the others had been as excited as I. I locked the memory up in that deepest part of me where we keep “the things that cannot be and yet they are.”

The years went on, then one day I was hurrying about my kitchen in a city apartment, trying to get some work out of the way while my three-year-old insistently cried her desire to “go park, see duck.” “I can’t go!” I said. “I have this and this to do, and when I’m through I’ll be too tired to walk that far.”

My mother, who was visiting us, looked up from the peas she was shelling. “It’s a wonderful day,” she offered, “really warm, yet there’s a fine breeze. Do you remember that day we flew kites?”

I stopped in my dash between stove and sink. The locked door flew open and with it a rush of memories. “Come on,” I told my little girl. “You’re right, it’s too good a day to miss.”

Another decade passed. We were in the aftermath(余波) of a great war. All evening we had been asking our returned soldier, the youngest Patrick Boy, about his experiences as a prisoner of war. He had talked freely, but now for a long time he had been silent. What was he thinking of --- what dark and horrible things?

“Say!” A smile sipped out from his lips. “Do you remember --- no, of course you wouldn’t. It probably didn’t make the impression on you as it did on me.”

I hardly dared speak. “Remember what?”

“I used to think of that day a lot in POW camp (战俘营), when things weren’t too good. Do you remember the day we flew the kites?”

1.Mrs. Patrick was laughing guiltily because she thought________.

A．she was too old to fly kites

B．her husband would make fun of her

C．she should have been doing her housework

D．her girls weren’t supposed to the boy’s games

2. By “we were all beside ourselves writer means that they all ________.

A．felt confused                           B．went wild with joy

C．looked on                             D．forgot their fights

3. What did the author think after the kite-flying?

A．The boys must have had more fun than the girls.

B．They should have finished their work before playing.

C．Her parents should spend more time with them.

D．All the others must have forgotten that day.

4.Why did the writer finally agree to take her little girl for an outing?

A．She suddenly remembered her duty as a mother.

B．She was reminded of the day they flew kites.

C．She had finished her work in the kitchen.

D．She thought it was a great day to play outside.

5. The youngest Patrick boy is mentioned to show that ______.

A．the writer was not alone in treasuring her fond memories

B．his experience in POW camp threw a shadow over his life

C．childhood friendship means so much to the writer

D．people like him really changed a lot after the war