The chief was just as taciturn as the rest ______ the force. He sat behind a very small desk

which made him look much bigger than he was. He didn't invite me to sit down nor did I ask if I could. I stood ______ his desk while he began to yell the rules ______ the office. The

cardinal rule was DON'T MAKE TROUBLE. Don't look ______ trouble. Don't make waves.

Questions about the Story

1. How was the police chief dressed?

2. Whose voice did Dwight hear through the walls?

3. Describe the office the chief assigned to Dwight.

4. Where did Dwight find the Manual for Officers?

5. What was the cardinal rule of the office?

Directions: Read the passage and note the prepositions.

Poor Mrs. Munsing

I was glad to get back 10 Mrs. Johnson's house that night. I wondered if she would be glad to have me, knowing that I was a low man on the totem pole at the station. I sat on the porch and watched the traffic in the street. It was a side street, so only a few cars would pass. More people walked here than drove. One of the pedestrians was the woman I had seen in the police station that afternoon. She was carrying a huge sack of groceries.

"Hello!" I yelled to her from the porch.

She dropped her sack and looked around. She saw me and nervously bent over to pick up the groceries that had fallen all over the sidewalk. I raced to her side to help her. "I'm so clumsy," she offered as an excuse.

"I'm sorry I frightened you."

"Oh, my nerves have been on edge ever since Mrs. Fitch was killed. I mean, ever since she had the accident."

I stopped picking up oranges and looked at her. She met my eyes.

"I shouldn't have said that. I have no right to say that. Excuse me. I must be going."

She had not remembered me from the police station that afternoon; she was too concerned about her job and the possibility of being seen talking to a total stranger. She gathered her bags and hurried down the street. I returned to the porch and began thinking about the newspaper article that my sister had shown me before I left New York: ARIZONA HEIRESS KILLED IN FALL.

My thoughts were interrupted by my landlady's coming onto the porch. "I saw you talking to that Mrs. Munsing; she's really crazy. The whole town knows it. She lost her sons in the war and her daughter was struck by lightning and killed. Sad, isn't it? But the whole thing left her a bit crazy. She drinks, you know. They say when she gets up in the morning, she hits the bottle right away. And it lasts until she goes to bed at night. But she's an excellent cook. I was up there for dinner one night. On Christmas eve, it was. The invitations were for seven o'clock, but we had a surprise snow storm that closed the mountain roads, and we had to walk the last five miles to the main house. What a night! I was frozen. I would have turned around and gone back to my own bed, but I wanted to take a good look inside the house. I hadn't been there since the first Mrs. Fitch passed away. It was danger­ous on those trails. They're very narrow, I'll let you know. It's no wonder that the third Mrs. Fitch fell off the road. And leaving that poor girl all by herself. Lucky she didn't fall herself."

I didn't understand what she was talking about. What poor girl? I was very confused. I wished I had read the newspaper article on the death.

Questions about the Story

1. What did Dwight do on his first evening?

2. Who did Dwight see from the porch?

3. How did Mrs. Munsing lose her children?

4. What does Mrs. Johnson think of Mrs. Munsing?

5. Why didn't Dwight understand what Mrs. Johnson was talking about?

CHAPTER THREE

The Fitches of Flagstaff

Directions: Read the passage and note the prepositions.

From Rags to Riches

The next day after work I went to the local newspaper office and asked if I could look at their old newspapers. I said since I was new in town, I wanted to get a sense of its history by reading the news of the past few years. This article caught my eye:

Mrs. James B. Fitch fell to her death today when walking with her stepdaughter on the family property. The funeral services will be held at the Convent of the Little Sisters of the Valley at 10:00 A.M. on Wednesday, the 12th of April. Expressions of sympathy should be in the form of contributions to the Convent of the Little Sisters of the Valley. The deceased is survived by her husband, Mr. James Fitch, and her stepdaughter, Sonia Fitch.

That evening at dinner I casually asked Mrs. Johnson about the Fitches. I especially wanted to know about the stepdaughter and the three wives.

"Yes, indeed, Mr. Fitch had three wives all richer than Rockefeller, they say. When he married his first wife, he didn't have a penny. Her father was dead set against her marrying that no-good Fitch. He tried to keep them apart. He even sent her to a girl's school in Switzerland or some place like that. But when she became twenty-one, she inherited her grandfather's money; and when she came back to Flagstaff, she married Fitch. She also came back from Switzerland with a daughter. It almost killed the old man. He was in the hospital for weeks. He was going to have his lawyers annul the marriage or disinherit the daughter. But he died in his sleep one night.. .and you know, she, the first Mrs. Fitch, died shortly thereafter, too. She was flying a plane that disappeared in the moun­tains. It was never found again. Would you like some more gravy on your potatoes?"

I hated to interrupt her story with my eating, so I encouraged her to go on.

"Well," she obliged, "Fitch got this woman in to look after the girl, but I think she spent more time looking at Fitch than after the daughter. The girl is blind, you know. She just sits all day in the house listening to music. And people who have been up at the house say it's always the same song. It would drive you crazy. No wonder poor Mrs. Munsing is crazy. That girl is strange. I have never seen her myself. She didn't come to the Christmas dinner the night I was there. She always takes her meals alone. Poor child; it must be a terrible strain not being able to see."

Questions about the Story

1. Where did Dwight go to find out more about the Fitches?

2. Where and when were the funeral services held?

3. What did the father of the first Mrs. Fitch do to prevent his daughter's marriage to Fitch?

4. What happened to the father when his daughter married Fitch?

5. Describe the daughter of the first Mrs. Fitch.

Directions: Read the passage and fill in each blank with an appropriate preposition. (Not all of the prepositions have been deleted.) Some blanks may use more than one word.

Date: 2015-01-29; view: 2065