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閱讀理解
In spite of the instructions he had been given, Tommy did not hurry straight round to Mrs．Blakey’s house with the note．Reading the-toy shop window with its decorated Christmas tree, he could not tear himself away from it until he had spent ten minutes staring at the gift he most wanted：a gun that fired corks．Where the road began to run downhill to Mrs．Blakey’s house he met some of his friends who were throwing snowballs．He joined in the fight, and by the time it finished, another twenty minutes had gone by．Ten more minutes were lost looking for the note for Mrs．Blakey, which had somehow dropped from his pocket during the fight．When, with the help of his friends, he finally found it, it was not only very wet, but, to his horror, he found that part of it was torn away and missing．That meant a further search, but in vain．So it happened that, now looking very untidy, Tommy reached Mrs．Blakey’s house nearly an hour late, carrying a dirty piece of paper that contained only the words．(See the words of the torn note on the right．)
Mrs．Blakey was puzzled over the note for a while, then, imagining she knew what the missing words were, told Tommy to tell his mother it would be all right．
Tommy returning home in much the same way as he had made the outward journey to Mrs．Blakey's, arrived not long before four o’clock to find his mother very angry and already putting her hat on．
“You naughty boy, where have you been?” she cried, and without waiting for an answer, “What did Mrs．Blakey say?”
Tommy told her．
“All right, you'd better come with me,” Mrs．Hendry said．And so once again Tommy found himself on the downhill road to Mrs．Blakey's．
At about the same moment that Mrs．Hendry and her son Tommy reached Mrs．Blakey's door, Mrs．Blakey herself, having taken a different road, was waiting outside the Hendry's home, wondering why there was no answer to her knock．Who could blame her for thinking that the torn note was an invitation to tea at the Hendry's, instead of which Mrs．Hendry had in fact been asking herself out to tea with Mrs．Blakey?
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