My 83-year-old mother came to live with me a year ago last November. She was very ill and I had to put my life on hold to _________ her.

Each morning, I got her up and _________ her and made her breakfast, and sat with her. I rushed for a bowl when she felt sick, and lit fires to keep her warm. I cooked and _________ her to take a few bites.

It’s a hard job caring for a sick or dying parent, whoever you are. But it was _________ hard for me, a doctor myself. I couldn’t help treating her in two different ways. The medical professional in me led me to examine her in _________ as if she were my patient. As a _________, I saw the woman who had given birth to me, wiped my nose, sent me to college and had been _________ presence in my life for over half a century.

Also, my mother didn’t _________ my hard work or understand that other people’s help could have _________ the burden.

None of the treatments her doctors gave her __________ , and finally her life became about comfort. When finally she accepted the painkillers, she accepted the fact that she would __________.

Illness and need took us across personal boundary I’d never before considered. We used to argue a lot, __________ during this time we shared stories and memories and we became __________.

When the __________ came, we accepted the fact that we looked at the world in different ways, but what __________ was that we loved each other.

The room in the workhouse where the boys were fed was a large stone hall. At one end the master, in his cook’s uniform, and two women served the food. This ________ a bowl of thin soup three times a day, with a piece of bread on Sundays. The boys ate ________ and were always hungry. The bowls never needed ________. The boys polished them with their spoons until they ________. After three months of this slow starvation, one of the boys told the others that so hungry was he ________ one night he might eat the ________ sleeping next to him. He had a wild ________ eye, and the other boys ________ him. After a long ________, they decided that one of them should ask for more food after supper that evening, and Oliver was ________.

The evening arrived: the soup was served, and the bowls were ________ again in a few seconds. Oliver went up to the master, with his bowl in his hand. He felt very ________, but also ________ with hunger.

“Please, sir, I want some more.”

The master was a fat, healthy man, but he turned very pale. He looked at the little boy in front of him with ________. Nobody else spoke.

“What?” he asked at last, in a   ________ voice.

“Please, sir,” replied Oliver, “I want some more.”

The master ________ him with the serving spoon, then seized Oliver’s arms and ________ for the beadle (执事). The beadle came quickly, heard the terrible news, and immediately ran to tell the board.

“He asked for more?” Mr. Limbkins, the fattest board member, asked in ________. “Is this really true?”

_____, Oliver was led away to be locked up, and a(n) ________ of five pounds was offered to anybody who would take him away and use him for work.

( Adapted from Oliver Twist《雾都孤儿》)

On a cold winter night, when the moon was shining clearly, and the snow lay on the ground, two foxes started out on a hunt to obtain something to satisfy their hunger. In order to _______ time on the boring way, they sang and frisked, as they walked along.

For some time, they were _______ in their hunt. Neither in the wood, _______ on the plain, not in the valley, nor on the hill, could they discover even a goose(鹅) or a _______. At last, they came to a farmer’s barn, standing by the roadside. Looking _______ in, their eyes _______ as they saw the farmer’s fattest chickens sitting inside, without a thought of the approaching _______.

Finding a hole _______ which they could enter with _______, they hurried in, and speedily secured those unprotected chickens.

One of them, too much ________ for a second thought, abandoned(放纵) himself without limit to the ________ before him. The other, however, having looked carefully about him, concluded it best to control his appetite.

In fact, he had noticed that the opening which had just permitted them to ________ their way through was extremely small. He thought that if, slim and half-starved, they could barely enter, but to pass out at the same place after a rich meal could be totally ________. What, then, would become of him, if suddenly ________, and he had to escape for his life?

Just as morning began to dawn, who should appear ________ the farmer himself? His eye instantly fell ________ the two foxes, and seizing a wooden pole, he ________ the trembling criminals hard.

The cautious one, who had denied ________, escaped through the opening by which he had entered. But the other, attempting to follow him, ________ firmly, and, being unable either to get through the hole or ________ back, was easily killed by the angry farmer.