At exactly eleven Sir Percival knocked and entered, with anxiety and worry in every line of his face. This meeting would decide his future life, and he obviously knew it.
“You may wonder, Sir Percival,” said Laura calmly, “if I am going to ask to be released（免除）from my promise to marry you. I am not going to ask this. I respect my father’s wishes too much.”
His face relaxed a little, but one of his feet kept beating the carpet.
“No, if we are going to withdraw（退出）from our planned marriage, it will be because of your wish, not mine. ”
“Mine?” he said in great surprise. “What reason could I have for withdrawing?”
“A reason that is very hard to tell you,” she answered. “There is a change in me.”
His face went so pale that even his lips lost their color. He turned his head to one side.
“What change?” he asked, trying to appear calm.
“When the promise was made two years ago”, she said, “my love did not belong to anyone. Will you forgive me, Sir Percival, if I tell you that it now belongs to another person?”
“I wish you to understand”, Laura continued, “that I will never see this person again, and that if you leave me, you only allow me to remain a single woman for the rest of my life. All I ask is that you forgive me and keep my secret.”
“I will do both those things,” he said. Then he looked at Laura, as if he was waiting to hear more.
“I think I have said enough to give you reason to withdraw from our marriage,” she added quietly.
“No. You have said enough to make it the dearest wish of my life to marry you,” he said.
1.How did Percival feel during his meeting with Laura?
A. Angry. B. Calm. C. Excited. D. Nervous.
2.We can learn from the passage that ______.
A. Laura’s father wished to end her marriage
B. Laura had once promised to marry Percival
C. Percival had been married to Laura for two years
D. Percival asked to be released from the marriage
3.What do you think is the ending of the story?
A. Laura was married to Percival.
B. Laura was married to another man.
C. Percival was married to another woman.
D. Both Percival and Laura remained single for the rest of their lives.
Some people believe that a Robin Hood is at work, others that a wealthy person simply wants to distribute（分发）his or her fortune before dying. But the donator who started sending envelopes with cash to deserving causes, accompanied by an article from the local paper, has made a northern German city believe in fairytales（童话）.
The first envelope was sent to a victim support group. It contained €10,000 with a cutting from the Braunschweiger Zeitung about how the group supported a woman who was robbed of her handbag; similar plain white anonymous（匿名）envelopes, each containing €10,000, then arrived at a kindergarten and a church.
The envelopes keep coming, and so far at least €190,000 has been distributed. Last month, one of them was sent to the newspaper’s own office. It came after a story it published about Tom, a 14-year-old boy who was severely disabled in a swimming accident. The receptionist at the Braunschweiger Zeitung opened an anonymous white envelope to find 20 notes of €500 inside, with a copy of the article. The name of the family was underlined.
“I was driving when I heard the news,” Claudia Neumann, the boy’s mother, told Der Spiegel magazine. “I had to park on the side of the road; I was speechless.”
The money will be used to make the entrance to their house wheelchair-accessible and for a course of treatment that their insurance company refused to pay for.
“For someone to act so selflessly, for this to happen in such a society in which everyone thinks of himself, was astonishing,” Mrs. Neumann said. Her family wonder whether the donator is a Robin Hood character, taking from banks to give to the needy.
Henning Noske, the editor of the Braunschweiger Zeitung, said: “Maybe it is an old person who is about to die. We just do not know.” However, he has told his reporters not to look for the city’s hero, for fear that discovery may stop the donations.
1.The Braunschweiger Zeitung is name of _____.
A. a church B. a bank C. a magazine D. a newspaper
2.Which of the following is TURE about the donation to Tom?
A. The donation amounted to €190,000.
B. The donation was sent directly to his house.
C. His mother felt greatly surprised at the donation.
D. All the money will be used for his treatment.
3.It can be inferred from the passage that .
A. the donation will continue to come
B. the donator is a rich old man
C. the donation comes from the newspaper
D. the donator will soon be found out
4.What would be the best title for the passage?
A. Money Is Raised by the Newspaper.
B. Unknown Hero Spreads Love in Envelopes.
C. Newspaper Distributes Money to the Needy.
D. Robin Hood Returns to the city.
I bent down in the shade under a sixty-foot-tall cactus（仙人掌）, waiting for them to appear. The time was eight thirty in the morning. For seven mornings I had come to the same distant spot in the Sonoran Desert, in southern Arizona. I was here to watch the roadrunner, a small fast-running bird.
I spotted two birds under a bush with red flowers. The roadrunners rushed out from under it. The birds moved rapidly on long skinny legs. Their feathers were brown and black. Their tails were seven inches long. Roadrunners use the tail for balance when running.
That day, the roadrunners performed a courtship（求婚）dance. They ran in wild circles. Suddenly, one stopped and stood still, its round eyes full of light. The second bird took hold of a small stick off the ground and presented it to the first, a gift serving as a symbol of their partnership.
I returned to the spot each day, leaving bits of boiled chicken hoping they would return. Roadrunners eat snakes, lizards, mice, beetles, and spiders. Food is in short supply in the desert, so my offerings were welcome. The pair grew used to me.
Soon after the pair finished building their nest six white eggs appeared in the nest bowl. In about three weeks, six roadrunner chicks, skin as black as coal, cried for food. Their parents brought food such as fence lizards and stink bugs. They fed their young until they were a month and a half old.
Early one morning, a coyote（丛林狼）came around, nose to the ground, for fresh bird meat. The roadrunners fearlessly drove the coyote away, but it was soon back. After three attacks the coyote went away for good, tail between its legs.
I stopped watching the nest when the little roadrunners, at two months of age, were ready to live on their own. It was hard to break away from “my roadrunner family.” Whenever I see a roadrunner now, rushing over the ground, I say hello to it as an old friend.
1.The author went to the Sonoran Desert to .
A. go on a tour of the desert
B. carry out research into some animals in the desert
C. make an observation about a kind of bird
D. enjoy an adventure in southern Arizona
2.What can we learn about roadrunners from the text?
A. They have short tails and legs.
B. They move at a fast pace.
C. Their feathers are red and brown.
D. They don’t like boiled chicken.
3.We can learn from the last but one paragraph that the roadrunners were .
A. brave B. clever C. easily-frightened D. lazy
4.Which of the following would be the best title for the text?
A. How do roadrunners seek a partner?
B. My close friendship with roadrunners.
C. Roadrunner family in the Sonoran Desert.
D. How did I find roadrunners in Arizona?
Einstein was the greatest scientist of his age. But he was almost as strange as his Theory of Relativity.
Once, while riding a street car in Berlin, he told the conductor that he had been given too much change. The conductor counted the change again and found it to be correct, so he handed it back to Einstein, saying “The trouble with you is you don’t know your figures.”
He had nothing and thought little of the things most people set their hearts on— fame and money. He didn’t want money or praise. He made his own happiness out of such simple things as his work and playing the violin and sailing his boat. Einstein’s violin brought him more joy than anything else in life.
He led a very simple sort of life, went around in old clothes that needed pressing, seldom wore a hat, He shaved （刮胡子）with the same soap that he used for his bath. The man who was trying to solve the most difficult problems of the universe said that using two kinds of soap made his life completely too complicated（复杂的）.
1.From the second paragraph we know Einstein _____.
A. wasn’t good at maths
B. enjoyed playing jokes
C. had some trouble with figures
D. didn’t care about money at all
2.Einstein was most interested in ______ in life.
A. sailing his boat B. fame and money
C. playing the violin D. work
3.“…using two kinds of soap made his life completely too complicated” in the last paragraph suggests that Einstein ______.
A. preferred to live a simple life
B. was a man of humor
C. was too poor to buy more soaps
D. liked to do something different
______ it is to listen to music when you are free.
A. What fun B. What a fun C. How fun D. How funny
—What are you going to do this weekend?
—_______. If time permits, I may go to Shanghai with my friends.
A. Don’t mention it B. It doesn’t matter C. It depends D. Forget it
