二．完形填空：

Why did I come today? I wondered. My Christmas   16   contained several people that claimed they wanted nothing but I knew their feelings would be hurt   17   I didn’t buy them anything, so gift buying was   18   but fun.

Hurriedly, I finished shopping and   19   the long checkout lines. In front of me were a boy of about 5 and a younger girl. She carried a beautiful pair of    20   slippers. When we finally   21   the checkout register, the girl   22   placed the shoes on the counter. She treated them as though they were a   23  .

“That will be $ 6.09,” the cashier said. The boy   24   his pockets. He finally came up with $ 3.12. “I guess we will have to put them back,” he   25   said. “We will come back some other time, maybe tomorrow.” With that statement, a soft   26   broke from the little girl. “But Jesus would have loved these shoes,” she cried.

“Well, we’ll go home and work some more. Don’t cry. We’ll surely   27  ,” he said. Quickly I handed $ 3.00 to the cashier. These children had waited in line for a long time. And,   28  , it was Christmas. Suddenly a pair of arms came around me and a small voice   29   said, “Thank you, lady.” “What did you   30   when you said Jesus would like the shoes?” I asked. The boy answered, “Our mommy is sick and going to   31  . Daddy said she might go before Christmas to be with Jesus.” The girl spoke, “My Sunday school teacher said the streets in heaven are shiny gold, just like these shoes. Won’t mommy be   32   walking on those streets in these shoes?”

My eyes   33   as I looked into her tear-streaked face. “Yes,” I answered, “I am   34   she will.” Silently I thanked God for using these children to   35   me of the true spirit of giving.

16. A. plan                B. list                    C. goods                D. purchases

17. A. if                       B. because             C. unless               D. since

18. A. something           B. nothing             C. anything            D. everything

19. A. waited                B. joined               C. attended            D. gathered

20. A. cotton                 B. leather                     C. gold                  D. silver

21. A. approached         B. passed               C. checked             D. found

22. A. immediately        B. hesitantly          C. shyly               D. carefully

23. A. gift                    B. treasure             C. life                   D. prize

24. A. opened               B. touched             C. tore                  D. searched

25. A. bravely               B. uncertainly        C. slowly               D. doubtfully

26. A. tear                    B. sob                   C. smile                D. sigh

27. A. leave                  B. come                C. return               D. arrive

28. A. above all             B. at last                C. at least                     D. after all

29. A. gratefully            B. sweetly             C. gracefully          D. kindly

30. A. request               B. expect               C. mean         D. attempt

31. A. hospital                     B. tomb                 C. heaven                     D. sky

32. A. equal                  B. comfortable              C. convenient         D. beautiful

33. A. pained                B. flooded             C. shut                  D. froze

34. A. sure                    B. afraid                C. glad                  D. confident

35. A. inform                B. warn                 C. cure                  D. remind

 (09·湖南D篇)

Andrew Ritchie, inventor of the Brompton folding bicycle, once said that the perfect portable bike would be “l(fā)ike a magic carpet…You could fold it up and put it into your pocket or handbag”. Then he paused: “But you’ll always be limited by the size of the wheels. And so far no one has invented a folding wheel.”

It was a rare — indeed unique — occasion when I was able to put Ritchie right. A 19th-century inventor, William Henry James Grout, did in fact design a folding wheel. His bike, predictably named the Grout Portable, had a frame that split into two and a larger wheel that could be separated into four pieces. All the bits fitted into Grout’s Wonderful Bag, a leather case.

Grout’s aim: to solve the problems of carrying a bike on a train. Now doesn’t that sound familiar? Grout intended to find a way of making a bike small enough for train travel: his bike was a huge beast. And importantly, the design of early bicycles gave him an advantage: in Grout’s day, tyres were solid, which made the business of splitting a wheel into four separate parts relatively simple. You couldn’t do the same with a wheel fitted with a one-piece inflated （充氣的） tyre.

So, in a 21st-century context, is the idea of the folding wheel dead? It is not. A British design engineer, Duncan Fitzsimons, has developed a wheel that can be squashed into something like a slender ellipse （橢圓）. Throughout, the tyre remains inflated.

Will the young Fitzsimons’s folding wheel make it into production? I haven’t the foggiest idea. But his inventiveness shows two things. First, people have been saying for more than a century that bike design has reached its limit, except for gradual advances. It’s as silly a concept now as it was 100 years ago: there’s plenty still to go for. Second, it is in the field of folding bikes that we are seeing the most interesting inventions. You can buy a folding bike for less than £1,000 that can be knocked down so small that it can be carried on a plane — minus wheels, of course — as hand baggage.

Folding wheels would make all manner of things possible. Have we yet got the magic carpet of Andrew Ritchie’s imagination? No. But it’s progress.

69. We can infer from Paragraph 1 that the Brompton folding bike        .

A. was portable

B. had a folding wheel

C. could be put in a pocket

D. looked like a magic carpet

70. We can learn from the text that the wheels of the Grout Portable        .

A. were difficult to separate

B. could be split into 6 pieces

C. were fitted with solid tyres

D. were hard to carry on a train

71. We can learn from the text that Fitzsimons’s invention        .

A. kept the tyre as a whole piece

B. was made into production soon

C. left little room for improvement

D. changed our views on bag design

72. Which of the following would be the best title for the text?

A. Three folding bike inventors

B. The making of a folding bike

C. Progress in folding bike design

D. Ways of separating a bike wheel

(09湖南卷)21. Every evening after dinner, if not        from work, I will spend some time walking my dog.                           

A. being tired B. tiring        C. tired   D. to be tired

(09遼寧)25. Usually John would be late for meetings. But this time,           to my surprise, he arrived on time.  

A little        B. much         C. ever         D. even 

The sun began to rise in the sky，________the mountain in golden light.(2013·湖南，25)

A．bathed? B．bathing

C．to have bathed? D．having bathed