3 . Last month I took my son Tom to see his grandparents in the countryside. When we arrived, my father and mother were so_________to see us.

At the lunch table, Tom told me proudly, “ Dad, I saw a hen flying.” “It’s_________. How can a hen fly?” I said without thinking. “Dad, in the yard, our dog ran after a hen. Finally the hen was forced to a_________. When she found there was no other way out, the_________hen suddenly flew up to the roof (屋顶) and escaped successfully. “Dad, why can a hen fly?” I thought for a while and said, “Maybe because of love. The hen loves her own_________. It is the love that sets off her inner power and she flies. ” Tom nodded. He seemed to have_________.

Last weekend we visited Tom’s grandparents again. I heard Tom_________from the yard, “Dad! The dog is running after the chickens!” I ran out of the house_________. The hen ran to a group of _________followed by the dog. The hen stopped and turned around suddenly and__________the dog angrily, with her two wings__________her children.

I ran fast and__________between the dog and the hen, shouting at the dog to drive it away. “Dad, why didn’t the hen fly away when she knew she couldn’t__________the dog?” asked Tom. I thought for a while and said, “Maybe because of love. The love for her__________is more than that for her own life.” Tom thought for a long time and nodded.

In fact, in our life, we will do the same as the hen did. Whenever__________, a mother’s first thought is always to protect her children.

4 . “Just sign here, sir,” the deliveryman said as he handed Oscar Reyna a package.

The package consisted of a long, narrow box ____ wrapped in brown paper. ____ the box, Oscar saw an umbrella inside—a very old one with a beautifully carved wooden handle. ____ he had not seen it in more than 20 years, he recognised it immediately.

Oscar was 16 when he first saw the____ umbrella. He had gone to a concert with his grandparents. As they were leaving, he noticed an umbrella on an empty seat. Impressed by its beauty, Oscar felt a strong desire to find its ____.

Oscar ____ the manager to look in the record of advance ticket sales. Just as he thought, a name matched the seat ____ Oscar had found the umbrella. The name was Mrs. Katie O’Brien.

Oscar talked his grandparents into going by Mrs. O’Brien’s house on their way home. He rang the bell, the door opened, and an elderly woman appeared. “May I ____ you?” she asked.

“I’d like to return it if it’s yours,” Oscar said, ____ the umbrella as if presenting a gift that had long been wished for.

“Why, yes! It’s mine,” replied Mrs. O’Brien with a ____ smile and shining eyes. “It was given to me by my father years ago. Thank you so much for returning it. May I offer you a reward for your ____?”

“No, ma’am,” he said. “My grandmother says that a good deed is its own reward.”

“Well, that’s ____ what my father used to say. What is your name, young man?”

Years later Oscar was staring at the finely carved handle of the umbrella as he remembered Mrs. O’Brien. It was in perfect condition, considering how ____ it was. Why had it arrived here today?

As if ____, a note fell from the paper. It read: Mrs. O’Brien wanted you to accept this umbrella as a present for a kind, ____ gesture long ago.

5 . Tracy Peck remembered sitting next to two frightened young sisters in a trans-Atlantic flight from Amsterdam to Minneapolis 23 years ago. After some chat, she learned how _________ their experience of escaping war was. They _________ her of her own daughters so before they got off the flight she reached into her purse, pulled out a(n) _________, wrote them a note and placed a $100 bill inside.

Peck had no idea then how much that envelope would mean to both girls. And one of the sisters, Ayda Zugay, had been _________ for her for nearly a decade. With the help of social media and the _________ of friends and family, Peck and the sisters reunited on an emotional Zoom call.

Peck told the sisters how _________ she remembered what it felt like when she first met them. Zugay told Peck things she had wanted to _________ with the note’s author for years — how _________ she was, why the gift had meant so much, how valuable such _________ messages are, how they had spent the money __________ pancakes and Coca Cola for an entire summer. Tears streamed down Peck’s face as she listened to Zugay’s __________. At a time when there’s so much pain and __________ in the world, she hopes others will take more time to help people __________.

They also talked about the __________ of meeting up in person someday. Peck __________ the sisters that whenever they visit, she’ll make them the best pancakes they’ve ever had.

7 . That cold January night, I was growing sick of my life in San Francisco. There I was, walking home at one o’clock in the morning after a tiring practice at the _________. With opening night only a week away, I was still learning my _________. I was having trouble dealing with my part-time job at the bank and my acting at night at the same time. As I walked, I thought seriously about _________ both acting and San Francisco. City life had become too much for me.

As I walked down empty streets under tall buildings, I felt very small and cold. I began _________, both to keep warm and to keep away from any possible _________. Very few people were still out except a few sad-looking _________ people under blankets.

About a block from my apartment, I heard a sound behind me. I turned quickly, half _________ to see someone with a knife or a gun. The street was empty. All I saw was a shining streetlight. _________, the noise had made me nervous, so I started to run faster. Not until I reached my apartment building and unlocked the door did I realize what the noise had been. It had been my _________ falling to the sidewalk.

Suddenly I wasn’t cold or tired anymore. I ran out of the door and back to __________I’d heard the noise. Although I searched the sidewalk anxiously for fifteen minutes, my wallet was nowhere to be found.

Just as I was about to give up the search, I heard the garbage truck pull up to the sidewalk next to me. When a voice called from the inside, “Alisa Camacho?” I thought I was __________. How could this man know my name? The door opened, and out __________a small red-haired man with an amused look in his eyes. “Is this what you’re looking for?” he asked, __________ up a small square shape.

It was nearly 3 A.M. by the time I got into bed. I wouldn’t get much sleep that night, but I had gotten my wallet back. I also had gotten back some __________ of city life. I realized that the city couldn’t be a bad place as long as people were __________ to help each other.

8 . It was a busy morning, when an elderly gentleman in his 80s, came to the hospital. I heard him saying to the nurse that he was in a hurry as he had an appointment at 9:00 am.

The nurse had him take a _________in the waiting area, _________ him it would be at least 40 minutes before someone could see him. I saw him _________ his watch and decided, since I was not busy — my patient didn’t _________ at point hours, I would exam his wound. While taking care of him, I asked him if he had another doctor’s appointment.

The gentleman told me no and told me that he _________to go to the nursing home to eat breakfast with his _________. He told me she has special disease. I asked if she would be _________ if he was a bit late. He replied that she no longer knew who he was, that she had not been able to _________ him in five years now. I was _________, “And you __________ go every morning, even though she doesn’t know who you are?”

He smiled as he patted my hand and said, “She doesn’t know me, but I know who she is.” I had to hold back __________ as he left.

Now I realized that in marriages, true love is __________of all that is. The happiest people don’t __________ have the best of everything; they just __________the best of everything they have. __________ isn’t about how to live through the storm, but how to dance in the rain.

9 . Until a few years ago, I was a calm person. If you were going to offend me or verbally ______ me, I almost never lost temper ______; of course I felt hurt, but I didn’t show it.

Then, one day, I met my husband and I fell in love with him, a proud ______ who loudly discusses things even with himself when he’s not happy. Things, however, got worse for me when we started ______ on things. He seemed really angry while I seemed polite. Truth is that I was ______ too, but I was used to not showing it on the outside. Fight after fight, he always acted as if nothing had happened a few minutes after each quarrel, while my moments of ______ discontent started to expand until they became hours, sometimes even days.

I felt this had to change and the conversation went ______ like this:

Me: “Either you change your ______ when we fight or I will start avoiding any discussion, otherwise this will ______ our relationship.”

Him: “Did you ______ the Mpemba Effect? If you put two ______ containers filled with the same amount of the same water into the freezer except that one has boiling water in it while the other one has water at ambient (周围的) ______, the boiling water will ______ faster than the ambient water. Baby, you got to boil first, to cool down faster. That’s why the Italians live longer than Canadians.”

The connection he suggested is to be ______, but I have learned a fact I didn’t know, one that has inspired me to understand that if I’m angry about something or someone, for that anger to disappear, it has to be towards the outside or otherwise it is like hiding ______ under the carpet: your house might look clean, but it is not.

10 . A lot of people fear getting old, because ageing is often connected with loneliness. But Terry, 75, in Green Bay, knows _________ what to do to keep sadness from seeping (浸入) into his _________.

Terry, an animal lover whose heart has a very _________ spot for cats, frequently visits the animal shelter in Green Bay to hold the _________ cats close and take a short sleep with them!

The charming _________ of the old man taking a short sleep while surrounded with cats _________ the workers. It was such a _________ picture that the workers always found themselves taking _________ of Terry and all the cats and posted them on the Facebook page.

_________, one photo with the cat, Lois, appealed to the followers of the page and ____________ over 47,000 likes and about 25,000 shares! In fact, in less than a day, Lois was ____________ by a new family!

Terry has become popular on the Internet. But more than the ____________, the old man is very happy to know that his love for cats is bringing a lot of help to the animal shelter by ____________ a lot of people to donate to the shelter.

Terry is happy, the ____________ behind which is not difficult to understand. His story just goes to show how a small deed can make a big ____________.