泛读2U5课外阅读

Passage 5 (Unit 5, Book II: A Mother’s Place.Parents)

Mother Rigby could do anything. She was a witch, a woman with strange powers. She could make water run uphill, or change a beautiful woman into a white horse. Many nights when the moon was full and bright, she could be seen flying over the tops of the houses in the village, sitting on a long wooden stick. It is a broomstick, and it helped her to do all sorts of strange tricks.

Mother Rigby ate a quick breakfast and then started to work on her broomstick. She was planning to make something that would look like a man. It would fill the birds with fear, and scare them from eating her corn, the way most farmers protect themselves from those black, pesky birds.

Mother Rigby worked quickly. She held her magic broomstick straight, and then tied another piece of wood across it. And already, it began to look like a man with arms.

Then she made the head. She put a pumpkin, a vegetable the size of a football, on top of the broomstick. She made two small holes in the pumpkin for eyes, and made another cut lower down that looked just like a mouth.

At last, there he was. He seemed ready to go to work for Mother Rigby and stop those old birds from eating her corn. But, Mother Rigby was not happy with what she made. She wanted to make her scarecrow look better and better, for she was a good worker. She made a purple coat and put it around her scarecrow, and dressed it in white silk stockings. She covered him with false hair and an old hat. And in that hat, she stuck the feather of a bird.

She examined him closely, and decided she liked him much better now, dressed up in a beautiful coat, with a fine feather on top of his hat. And, she named him Feathertop.

She looked at Feathertop and laughed with happiness. He is a beauty, she thought. "Now what?" she thought, feeling troubled again. She felt that Feathertop looked too good to be a scarecrow. "He can do something better," she thought, "than just stand near the corn all summer and scare the crows." And she decided on another plan for Feathertop.

She took the pipe of tobacco she was smoking and put it into the mouth of Feathertop. "Puff, darling, puff," she said to Feathertop. "Puff away, my fine fellow. It is your life." Smoke started to rise from Feathertop's mouth. At first, it was just a little smoke, but Feathertop worked hard, blowing and puffing. And, more and more smoke came out of him.

"Puff away, my pet," Mother Rigby said, with happiness. "Puff away, my pretty one. Puff for your life, I tell you." Mother Rigby then ordered Feathertop to walk. "Go forward," she said. "You have a world before you."

Feathertop put one hand out in front of him, trying to find something for support. At the same time he pushed one foot forward with great difficulty. But Mother Rigby shouted and ordered him on, and soon he began to go forward. Then she said, "you look like a man, and you walk like a man. Now I order you to talk like a man."

Feathertop gasped, struggled, and at last said in a small whisper, "Mother, I want to speak, but I have no brain. What can I say?"

"Ah, you can speak," Mother Rigby answered. "What shall you say? Have no fear. When you go out into the world, you will say a thousand things, and say them a thousand times...and saying them a thousand times again and again, you still will be saying nothing. So just talk, babble like a bird. Certainly you have enough of a brain for that."

1. After breakfast, Mother Rigby decided to make __________.

A. the birds fear

B. her broomstick alive

C. a scarecrow

D. a manlike companion

2. Considering herself “a good worker”, Mother Rigby was confident in __________.

A. her strange powers

B. her talents for handicraft

C. anything she made

D. her selection of materials

3. Mother Rigby gave Feathertop her pipe so that __________.

A. Feathertop would keep alive

B. Feathertop would be manlier

C. Feathertop would live the same life as she

D. Feathertop would be related to her forever

4. By calling Feathertop her “pet”, Mother Rigby wanted to show __________.

A. her superiority over him

B. her encouragement to him

C. her love for him

D. her interest in him

5. According to Mother Rigby, Feathertop “still will be saying nothing” because __________.

A. he was not clever enough to learn anything

B. he was only made to have birds’ intelligence

C. he did not have a brain to remember anything

D. he could learn nothing worthwhile in the world