The car _______ on half way so we had to walk to school.

Darkness _____, so we had to stop our journey and stayed on a farm for the night.

 A. happened             B. spread              C. broke           D. fell

My father was raised in a fatherless home at a time when the family of five struggled to survive, which caused my father to be extremely tightfisted(吝啬) with money.
When we children became    16  that other children got pocket money from their parents, we made a(n)   17  to ask our father from some. Immediately his face turned stone-cold, and he said, “If you’re old enough to ask, you’re old enough to    18 .” And we had to seek odd jobs about the neighborhood.
He didn’t    19  his attitude as we grew into adulthood. There was a time when    20  of us had a car, so we had to ride a    21  whenever we came home. Though the bus stopped about two miles from home, Dad never met us, 22  in bad weather. If someone    23  (and my brothers did a lot), he’d say in his    24  father-voice. “That’s what your legs are    25  !”
One spring morning I was on the bus home from    26 . Tests and long hours in labs had    27  me exhausted. As other students were    28  at their stops. I looked silently out of the window. Finally, the bus came to a    29  at my destination, and I    30 , carrying my suitcase to begin the long journey home.
The row of privet hedge(树篱) came into    31 , which lined the driveway that climbed the hill to our house. I stopped to put a book in the suitcase. When I stood up, I saw something gray    32  along the top of the hedge toward the house.
It was the top of my father’s head. I    33  then, each time I came home, he would stand behind the hedge, watching,    34  he knew I had arrived safely. I held back my tears. He did care,   35 .
Upon reaching home, I found my father innocently in his chair. “So! It’s you!” he said, his face lengthening into surprise.

Our car ______ on our way to school, so we had to walk there.

Children are very, very observant and have excellent memories.
Around Christmas last year, we were heading to Grandma’s house. The drive was an hour long, so we had plenty of time to chat. We were waiting to get onto the freeway when my daughter Hayley noticed a homeless man, no sign in hand. “Mom, is that man homeless?” I told her I believed he was.
We got onto the freeway and drove away. But the chatting had stopped. Hayley was quiet all the way there. We spent a few hours at Grandma’s then packed up to head home. As we drove back, Hayley rustled(沙沙作响地移动) around in her seat, trying to reach something on the floor of the car. I asked her to sit still, worried her seatbelt would slip from the booster seat. She mumbled(咕哝)something and sat back.
“Mom, will the homeless man still be outside tonight?” I told her I was not sure, maybe. It was a freezing night, and I started to think of the man now too, and how cold he must be.
All of a sudden, as we got onto the freeway exit, Haley shrieked (尖叫): “There he is! There he is!” and started rolling down her window. “Mom, I found these gloves and scarf back here. Can I give them to him? Can I?” she asked.
I pulled over to the edge of the road, and beckoned(招手示意) the man to come over. Haley smiled at him and handed him her gift. I looked in the front passenger seat, loaded with leftovers from Grandma’s house, and handed those out to him as well.
The man thanked us, he clutched (抓紧) my hand in his and I could feel the bitter cold of them. We wished him a safe night and continued on our journey to our warm home.
“Haley, that was very sweet of you!” I told her. “Well, they were your gloves and scarf, Mom, but his hands looked colder, and he has to keep looking for his house!”
We had talked about homelessness before , and I could hear myself telling her: “Someone who has lost their home.” She had taken my words literally and thought the man’s home was like a lost puppy.
On the ride home, and as I carried my sleeping angel into the house that night, my heart filled with gratitude.
【小题1】The underlined word “observant” in Paragraph I means “      ”.