1 .

The Pillow

At the age of sixteen, I joined a volunteer group with my dad. I went on my first volunteer project in West Virginia. On the night we arrived, we discovered that “our family” was living in a trailer(拖车) that was in poor condition. A crew had been working on it for two weeks, but every time they finished one problem, another surfaced.

We decided the only reasonable solution was to build a new house — something unusual but necessary under these circumstances. The family was overjoyed with their new house that was twenty by thirty feet with three bedrooms, a bath and a kitchen.

On Tuesday of that week, while we ate lunch together, I asked the family’s three boys, Josh, Eric and Ryan, “What do you want for your new room?” Expecting toys and other gadgets that children usually ask for, we were surprised when Josh responded, “I just want a bed.”

The boys had never slept in a bed! They were accustomed to plastic mats. That night we had a meeting and decided that beds would be the perfect gift. On Thursday night, a few adults in our group drove to the nearest city and bought beds and new bedding.

When we saw the delivery truck coming, we told the family about the surprise. We could hardly contain ourselves. It was like watching excited children on Christmas morning.

That afternoon, as we fitted the frames of the beds together, Eric ran into the house to watch us. Too dirty to enter his room, he observed with wide-eyed enthusiasm from the doorway.

As my father slipped a pillowcase onto one of the pillows, Eric asked, “What is that?”

“A pillow,” he replied.

“What do you do with it?” Eric continued to ask.

“When you go to sleep, you put your head on it,” I answered softly. Tears came to our eyes as she handed Eric the pillow.

“Oh . . . that’s soft,” he said, hugging it tightly.

Now, when my sister or I start to ask for something that seems urgent, my Dad gently asks, “Do you have a pillow?”

We know exactly what he means.

1. The writer’s first volunteer project was ________.

A．working on a poor trailer	B．helping a poor family
C．donating beds and bedding	D．dealing with a housing problem

2. On bearing Josh’s answer, the writer was shocked because ________.

A．the family lived in a trailer	B．he expected to get some toys
C．he didn’t know what a bed was	D．the boys had no bed to sleep in

3. From the passage, we can learn that Eric had never seen before ________.

A．a trailer

B．a truck

C．a pillow

D．a house

4. By sayg “Do you have a pillow?”, the writer’s father means that ________.

A．what they want to get may be unnecessary

B．they should not waste money on small things

C．they should do more volunteer work for the poor

D．what he will buy is not what they want but a pillow

2 . Hobbs was an orphan（孤儿）. He worked in a factory and every day he got a little money. Hard work made him thin and weak. He wanted to borrow a lot of money to learn to paint pictures, but he did not think he could pay off the debts.
One day a lawyer said to him, “One thousand dollars, and here is the money.” As Hobbs took the package of notes, he was very dumbfounded. He didn’t know where the money came from and how to spend it. He said to himself, “I could go to find a hotel and live like a rich man for a few days; or I give up my work in the factory and do what I’d like to do: painting pictures. I could do that for a few weeks, but what would I do after that? I should have lost my place in the factory and have no money to live on. If it were a little less money, I would buy a new coat, or a radio, or give a dinner to my friends. If it were more, I could give up the work and pay for painting pictures. But it’s too much for one and too little for the other.”
“Here is the reading of your uncle’s will（遗嘱）,” said the lawyer, “telling what is to be done with this money after his death. I must ask you to remember one point. Your uncle has said you must bring me a paper showing exactly what you did with his money, as soon as you have spent it.”
“Yes, I see. I’ll do that,” said the young man.
1. Hobbs wanted to borrow money to _______.

A．study abroad

B．work abroad

C．pay off the debts

D．learn to paint pictures

2. What does the underlined word “dumbfounded” （in Paragraph 2） probably mean?

A．Surprised.

B．Frightened

C．Satisfied.

D．Excited.

3. With the money he got, at first Hobbs _______.

A．planned to have a happy life for a few days	B．decided to give up his work in the factory
C．was to give a dinner to his friends	D．had no idea what to do

4. Hobbs was asked to _______.

A．tell the lawyer what he did with the money after spending it

B．read his uncle’s will

C．buy some pictures

D．tell the lawyer what was to be done with the money