The Bad Neighbors

Jason went out to look for a job. As he was passing his neighbor Rick’s house, an important piece of paper ________ of his pocket.

Rick ________ to see this. He thought: “What a disgrace! Jason did this ________. He’s trying to mess up the front of my house!”

But instead of going out and saying something, Rick planned his revenge（报复）. That night, he took his wastepaper basket and went to Jason’s house. Jason happened to see ________ Rick was doing. Later, as he was picking up the waste paper which had been dumped on his porch, Jason found the important piece of paper that he had lost. It was torn into dozens of pieces. He thought that Rick had not only ________ his pocket, but also had the cheek to mess up his doorway with rubbish!

Jason didn’t want to say anything, instead, he started plotting his revenge. That night, he phoned a farmer to make an order of ten pigs and a hundred ducks. He asked that they be ________ to Rick’s house.

Of course, the next day, Rick had quite a bit of trouble trying to get rid of so many animals. “It must be Jason who did this!” Rick thought angrily. He, again, started planning his revenge. And so it went on.

They continued trying to ________ one another, and each time their acts of revenge got bigger and more ridiculous. The dropping of that single piece of paper ended up invoking（向……求助）a rock band, a fire engine, a hail of stones thrown at one person’s windows, and the driving of a lorry into the other’s garden fence and walls. They finally got so ________ with one another that they got into a fight.

Both ended up in the hospital and had to spend quite a bit of time together while they were sharing a room there. At first, they refused to speak to each other, but, one day, tired of the ________, they began to talk. As time passed, they finally dared discuss the piece-of-paper incident. They realized that it had all been a misunderstanding and that if they had talked to each other on the first occasion — instead of jumping to ________ about bad intentions（意图）— then none of this would have happened.

Jason and Rick apologized to each other. They decided to work together to fix their broken house.