There was once a lonely girl who wanted love very much. One day while she was walking in the forest, she found two dying birds. She took them home and put them in a small _________. She was happy to have two “friends”. She _________ them with love and the birds grew strong. One day the girl happened to leave the door of the cage open. The larger and the _________ of the two flew out of the cage. The girl was afraid that it would fly away. She caught it quickly. She felt glad that she caught the bird before it could fly away. Suddenly she couldn’t _________ a sound from the bird. When she opened her hand, the bird was already dead. Her _________ killed the bird!

Then she noticed _________ bird jumping up and down _________ the cage. She could feel its great need for freedom (自由). It wanted to fly into the clear, blue _________. So she lifted it from the cage and let it fly away high. The bird circled once, twice, and three times. The girl _________ as the bird flew. She didn’t care about losing the bird any more. She wanted it to be happy. Suddenly the bird flew closer and landed softly on her shoulder. It sang the __________ song she had never heard.

The fastest way to lose love is to hold on it too tightly, and the best way to keep love is to give it wings.

It was getting late. There was no noise in the forest. We could only hear the birds singing. And then, a bear—a big brown bear—came into the forest.

The bear stopped under a tall tree. He was very hungry. He looked up into the tree. There in the nut tree was his supper—a supper of nice nuts. But the nuts were high up in the tree. The hungry bear could not reach them. But he knew how to get his supper. He climbed up the tree.

Up and up he climbed. He climbed onto a big branch of the tree. He sat there and then shook(摇) the branch again and again. At last the branch broke. The brown bear fell down with the branch and nuts.

The bear sat up and looked around. With his big paws he picked up the nuts and ate them up.

Long long ago, a donkey (驴) fell into a well (井). The animal cried for hours as the farmer tried to think out what to do. Finally, the farmer thought the animal was too old and the well needed to be covered up anyway, so he decided not to save the donkey.

The farmer invited his neighbours to help him. They began to shovel (铲) dirt into the well. The donkey cried harder. But a few minutes later, he became quiet. The farmer looked into the well, and was surprised by what he saw.

While every shovelful of dirt hit his back, the donkey would shake it off and take a step on the new layer of dirt. As the farmer’s neighbours continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, the donkey would shake it off and take another step up. Soon the donkey stepped up out of the well and ran away, to the surprise of all the neighbours.

The lesson we get from this story is that if life shovels some dirt on us, we must get out the well and not let it cover us. We must learn to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a stepping-stone (踏脚石). We can get out of the deepest well by never giving up!