The day was ended—quite successfully, so far as she knew. The Trustees and t

游客2023-11-13  35

问题     The day was ended—quite successfully, so far as she knew. The Trustees and the visiting committee had made their rounds, and read their reports, and drunk their tea, and now were hurrying home to their own cheerful firesides, to forget their bothersome little charges for another month. Jerusha leaned forward watching with curiosity—and a touch of wistfulness—the stream of carriages and automobiles that rolled out of the asylum gates.
    In imagination she followed first one equipage, then another, to the big houses dotted along the hillside. She pictured herself in a fur coat and a velvet hat trimmed with feathers leaning back in the seat and nonchalantly murmuring "Home" to the driver. But on the door-sill of her home the picture grew blurred.
    Jerusha had an imagination—an imagination, Mrs. Lippett told her, that would get her into trouble if she didn’t take care—but keen as it was, it could not carry her beyond the front porch of the houses she would enter. Poor, eager, adventurous little Jerusha, in all her seventeen years, had never stepped inside an ordinary house; she could not picture the daily routine of those other human beings who carried on their lives undiscommoded by orphans.
    Je-ru-sha Ab-bott
    You are wan-ted
    In the of-fice,
    And I think you’d
    Better hurry up!
    Tommy Dillon, who had joined the choir, came singing up the stairs and down the corridor, his chant growing louder as he approached room F. Jerusha wrenched herself from the window and refaced the troubles of life.
    "Who wants me?" she cut into Tommy’s chant with a note of sharp anxiety.
    Mrs. Lippett in the office,
    And I think she’s mad.
    Ah-a-men!
    Tommy piously intoned, but his accent was not entirely malicious. Even the most hardened little orphan felt sympathy for an erring sister who was summoned to the office to face an annoyed matron; and Tommy liked Jerusha even if she did sometimes jerk him by the arm and nearly scrub his nose off.
    Jerusha went without comment, but with two parallel lines on her brow. What could have gone wrong, she wondered. Were the sandwiches not thin enough? Were there shells in the nut cakes? Had a lady visitor seen the hole in Susie Hawthorn’s stocking? Had—O horrors!—one of the cherubic little babes in her own room F "sauced" a Trustee?
    The long lower hall had not been lighted, and as she came downstairs, a last Trustee stood, on the point of departure, in the open door that led to the porte-cochere. Jerusha caught only a fleeting impression of the man—and the impression consisted entirely of tallness. He was waving his arm towards an automobile waiting in the curved drive. As it sprang into motion and approached, head on for an instant, the glaring headlights threw his shadow sharply against the wall inside. The shadow pictured grotesquely elongated legs and arms that ran along the floor and up the wall of the corridor. It looked, for all the world, like a huge, wavering daddy-long-legs.
    Jerusha’s anxious frown gave place to quick laughter. She was by nature a sunny soul, and had always snatched the tiniest excuse to be amused. If one could derive any sort of entertainment out of the oppressive fact of a Trustee, it was something unexpected to the good. She advanced to the office quite cheered by the tiny episode, and presented a smiling face to Mrs. Lippett. To her surprise the matron was also, if not exactly smiling, at least appreciably affable; she wore ah expression almost as pleasant as the one she donned for visitors.
    "Sit down, Jerusha, I have something to say to you. " Jerusha dropped into the nearest chair and waited with a touch of breathlessness. [br] At the end of the passage, the matron sounded______.

选项 A、approachable
B、cold
C、annoyed
D、puzzled

答案 A

解析 细节题。由文章结尾处“…the matron was also,if not exactly smiling,at least appreciably affable:shewore an expression almost as pleasant as the one she donned for visitors.”可知此时的监事表情和蔼,A项approachable意为亲切的,平易近人,和文意吻合,故选A。
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