Mary’s dime（一毛錢）

It was Sunday afternoon. I decided to clean up the room nicely so that my parents would feel   1  when they returned from a long ride! Then, I sat in the room, having nothing to do.

　　 What else could I do? Then, with no reason, I suddenly  2  the pale face of that little beggar(乞丐) girl. I could see the glad light   3  her eyes when I put the dime in her little dirty hand.

　　  How much I  4  that dime, too! Grandpa gave it to me a whole month ago, and I had kept it ever since in my red box upstairs, but those sugar apples looked so attractive, and were so   5  — only a dime a piece — that I wanted to have one.

　　  I could imagine the little girl stood there in front of the  6  in her old dirty dress, looking at the   7  that were put all in a row in the window. I wonder what I should say, “Little girl, what do you want?” I gently asked. She felt   8  and looked straight at me, just as if（似乎）nobody had spoken so   9  to her before. She realized what I had meant, so she said seriously and sadly. “I was thinking how good one of those delicious hamburgers would  10 . I haven’t had anything to eat today.”

　　 Now I thought to myself, “Mary Williams, you have had a good breakfast and a good lunch today,   11  this poor girl has not had a mouthful yet. You can give her your  12 . She needs it a great deal more than you do.”

　　 I could not run away from that little girl’s sad,  13  look — so I dropped the dime right into her hand. How  14  the girl was! I am so glad I gave her the dime,  15  I had to go without the apple lying there in the window.

1.                A．disturbed       B．unhappy        C．satisfied  D．interested

2.                A．saw            B．remembered    C．forgot    D．described

3.                A．filling          B．protecting       C．a(chǎn)ttracting D．touching

4.                A．hated          B．loved          C．missed   D．noticed

5.                A．valuable        B．meaningful      C．expensive D．cheap

6.                A．market         B．library          C．store D．bookshop

7.                A．dresses         B．magazines       C．books    D．candies

8.                A．surprised       B．excited         C．pleased   D．worried

9.                A．happily         B．kindly          C．a(chǎn)ngrily   D．sadly

10.               A．taste           B．sound          C．feel  D．smell

11.               A．since          B．so             C．a(chǎn)nd  D．but

12.               A．a(chǎn)pple          B．hamburger      C．dime D．candy

13.               A．proud          B．a(chǎn)ngry          C．calm  D．hungry

14.               A．grateful        B．unlucky        C．lonely D．friendly

15.               A．unless         B．if              C．though    D．because

Like many lovers of books, Mary and her husband, Richard Goldman, seldom walked past a bookstore without stopping to look inside. They often talked of opening their own store one day.
When Mary was in hospital with heart trouble in 1989, they decided it was time to get serious. Richard, who worked for a business company, wanted to work for himself, and Mary needed to slow down from her  job.
They started by talking to bookstore owners and researching(調(diào)查) the industry. “We knew it had to be a specialty store because we couldn’t match the big chains dollar for dollar,” says Mary. One figure caught her attention: She’d read somewhere that roughly 20 percent of books sold were mysteries(推理小說), and many buyers spent more than $300 a year on books. She and Richard were themselves mystery readers.
On Halloween 1992, they opened the Mystery Lovers Bookshop and Café near their home. With three children in college, the couple could not spend all the family’s money to start a shop. To cover the whole  $ 100, 000 cost, they drew some of their savings, borrowed from relatives and from a bank.
The store broke even in its first year, with only $ 120,000 in sales. But Mary was always coming up with new ways to attract customers. The shop had a coffee bar and it offered gifts to mystery lovers and served dinners for book clubs that met in the store. She also invited dozens of writers to discuss their stories.
Today Mystery Lovers makes sales of about $ 420,000 a year. After paying taxes, business costs and the six part-time sales clerks, Richard and Mary together earn about $ 34,000.
“The job you love may not go hand in hand with a million-dollar income,” says Richard. “This has always been about an enjoyable life for ourselves, not about making a lot of money.”
【小題1】 After Mary got well from her illness they began _________.