A beautiful and very successful actress was the star for a new musical show. Her home was in the country, but she didn’t want to go back there every night, so she bought an expensive house in the center of the city, got some beautiful furniture and got a man to paint the rooms in new colour.
It was very difficult to get tickets for her show in the evening, because everyone wanted to see it. So she decided to give the painter two of the best seats. She hoped that this would make him work better for her. He took the tickets without saying anything, and she heard no more about them until the end of month, when she got the painter’s bill. At the bottom of it were these words: “Four hours from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. watching Miss Hall sing and dance: 3 pounds,” with this note: “Before 5:00 p.m. I get 10 shillings (先令)an hour and after 5:00 p.m. 15 shillings.”

1. 1.

   The actress bought a house in the center of the city because        .

   1. A.
      she liked to live in the busiest place
   2. B.
      she didn’t like to live in the country
   3. C.
      she wanted to work harder than before
   4. D.
      she didn’t want to live in old house
2. 2.

   In order to make the painter work better for her, the actress        .

   1. A.
      gave him two tickets for her show
   2. B.
      sang and danced for four hours
   3. C.
      decided to give him 3 pounds
   4. D.
      invited him for a big dinner
3. 3.

   The actress got the painter’s bill        .

   1. A.
      to ask for the money of his painting work
   2. B.
      to ask her to pay for his watching her show
   3. C.
      in which he showed his thanks for the tickets
   4. D.
      in which he expressed his dissatisfaction
4. 4.

   It can be learned from the text that one pound is         shillings.

   1. A.
      10
   2. B.
      12
   3. C.
      15
   4. D.
      20
5. 5.

   What kind of man was the painter?

   1. A.
      He was a careful man.
   2. B.
      He was a poor man.
   3. C.
      He was not friendly to others.
   4. D.
      He knew little about music and dance.

A lot of boys and girls in western（西方的）countries are wearing the same kind of clothes, and many of them have long hair, so it is often difficult to tell whether（是否）they are boys or girls.
One day, an old man went for a walk in a park in Washington, and when he was tired, he sat down in a chair. A young person was standing on the other side of the pool.
“Oh!” the old man said to the person sitting be side him on the chair. “Do you see that person with the glasses and long hair? Is it a boy or a girl?” “A girl.” said the neighbor（隔壁的人）. “She is my daughter.” “Oh!” the old man said quickly. “Please forgive me, I did not know that you were her mother.” “I’m not.” Said the other person, “I’m her father.”
【小题1】What did the old man see on the other side of the pool?

A young man once went into town and bought himself a pair of trousers. When he got home, he went upstairs to his bedroom and put them on. He found that they were about two inches (英尺) longer.
He went downstairs to the kitchen. His mother and two sisters were washing up the tea-things there. “The new trousers are too long,” he said. “They need shortening（缩短）by about two inches.
Could one of you do it for me, please?” His mother and sisters were busy and none of them said anything. But when his mother  finished washing up, she went quietly upstairs to her son’s bedroom and shortened the trousers by two inches. She came downstairs without saying anything to her daughters.
Later on, after supper, the elder sister remembered her brother’ s trousers. She was a kind girl,so she went quietly upstairs withoutsaying anything to anyone, and shortened the trousers by two inches.  The younger sister went to the cinema, but when she came home she,too, remembered her brothers trousers. So she ran upstairs and did as her mother and sister had done. You can imagine（想象）the look on the young man’s face when he put the trousers on the   next morning.   .
【小题1】What were the young man’s new trousers like at first?

A four-year-old girl is lying in the arms of a doctor. She has just become motherless. The bombing(爆炸) destroyed her home and killed her mother.
Every day we see pictures like this on TVs or in newspapers. We see young Iraqi children asking for food and water from American and soldiers as they move through towns and cities towards the capital, Baghdad(巴格达). We see these children following grown-ups, carrying bags of things almost at the same size as their small bodies as they leave their homes in Baghdad.
“Dad, why are the Americans fighting us? Are we going to be killed?” asks the son of Abu Sinar, an Iraqi engineer. Abu finds it hard to explain this war to his eight-year-old son.
He tries to comfort him by saying ,“The bombs（炸弹） are far away from us. The Americans are fighting the soldiers. We are going to be all right.” Even though Abu knows this isn’t always the truth, what else can he do? In Baghdad, parents give their children sleeping pills to make them sleep so that they won’t hear the sound of bombing. And all the schools are closed.
“All we do is to listen to and hear the war,” said Abu, “We, all the people and the children, have to live in fear(恐惧). We feel hopeless and helpless. We don’t know where the next bombs are going. We can do nothing but wait to be killed.”
【小题1】During the war, children are ______________.  
A.studying at school       B.safer than their parents   C.in great danger
【小题2】The children have to flee(逃离) their homes because_________.
A.it’s dangerous to stay at home because of the bombing.
B.their parents are not at home
C.they want to get food and water.
【小题3】Abu finds it hard to explain this war to his son, because___________.
A.he doesn’t want to tell him the real reason
B.he doesn’t want to tell a lie.
C.he doesn’t know how to explain it clearly.
【小题4】“sleeping pills” are __________.
A. a kind of thing to help them to be away from the war.
B.a kind of medicine to help them to fall asleep
C.a kind of food to make them strong
【小题5】According to the passage we know that__________.
A. all the children in Iraqi are looking for something to eat.
B. all the children in Iraqi are thinking about something to solve the war problem
C. the children in Iraqi are feeling fearful, helpless and hopeless during the war.