综合英语 试题 Reading Comprehension.docVIP

1 When Laura reached school-going age the discussions about moving became more urgent. Her father did not want the children to go to school with the village children and for once her mother agreed with him. Not because, as he said, they ought to have a better education than they could get at Lark Rise; but because she feared they would tear their clothes and catch cold and get dirty heads going a mile and a half to and from the school in the village. So empty cottages in the market town were examined and often it seemed that the next week or the next month they would be leaving Lark Rise for ever; but again each time something would happen to prevent the removal, and gradually a new idea came up. To gain time, their father would teach the two eldest children to read and write, so that, if asked by the School Attendance Office, their mother could say they were leaving the small village shortly, and in the meantime, were being taught at home. So their father brought home two copies of Mavors First Reader and taught them the alphabet; but just as Laura was beginning on words of one syllable, he was sent away to work on a distant job, only coming home at weekends. Laura, left at the c-a-t s-i-t-s on the m-a-ts stage, then had to carry her book round after her mother as she went about her housework, asking, “Please, Mother, what does h-o-u-s-e spell?” or “W-a-l-k, Mother, what is that?” Often when her mother was too busy or too tired to attend to her, she would sit and fix her eyes on a page that might as well have been printed in Hebrew for all she could make of it , frowning and studying the print as though she would make out the meaning by force of concentration. After weeks of this, there came a day when, quite suddenly, as it seemed to her, the printed characters took on a meaning. There were still many words, even in the first page of that simple book , she could not understand; but she could jump those and yet make sense of the whole.揑m reading! Im reading!攕he cri