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CEFR READING PART PRACTICE – MULTIPLE CHOICE
Read the text and answer the questions 1-7.
TASK 9
Of all the Elwell family Aunt Mchetabel was certainly the most unimportant member. Not that she was useless in
her brother’s family; she was expected, as a matter of course, to take upon herself the most tedious and uninteresting
pan of the household labours. The Elwells were not consciously unkind
to their aunt, but she was so insignificant a
figure in their lives that she was almost invisible to them. Aunt Mehetabel did not resent this treatment; she took it
quite unconsciously as they gave it. It was to be expected when one was an old maid dependent in a busy family.
She had been the same at twenty as at sixty, a mouselike little creature, loo shy for anyone to
notice or to wish for a
life of her own.
Even as a girl she had been clever with her needle in the way of patching quilts which consisted of several layers of
cloth sewn together to make an attractive pattern or a picture. More than that she could never learn to do. The
garments which she made for herself were lamentable affairs, and she was humbly grateful for any help in the
bewildering business of putting them together. But in patchwork she enjoyed some importance. During years of
devotion to this one art she had accumulated a considerable store of quilting patterns. Sometimes the neighbours
would send over and ask her for a loan
of her sheaf-of-wheat design, or the double-star pattern.
She never knew how her great idea came to her. Sometimes she even wondered reverently, in the phraseology of the
weekly prayer-meeting, if it hadn’t been “sent" to her. She never admitted to herself that she could have thought of
it without other help. It was too great, too ambitious a project for her humble mind to have conceived. Even when
she finished drawing the design
with her fingers, she gazed at it incredulously, not dating to believe that it could
indeed be her handiwork.
Now her nimble old fingers reached out longingly to turn her dream into reality. She began to think adventurously
of trying it out - it would perhaps be not too selfish to make one square - just one unit of her design to see how it
would look. She dared do nothing in the household where she was a dependent without asking permission. With a
heart lull of hope and fear thumping furiously against her old ribs she approached
her sister-in-law, who listened to
her absently and said, “Why, yes, start another quilt if you want to". Mehetabel tried honestly to make her see that
this would be no common quilt, but her limited vocabulary and her emotion stood between her and expression.
Mehetabel rushed back up the
steep attic stairs to her room, and in joyful agitation began preparations for the work
of her life. She had but little time during the daylight hours filled with the incessant household drudgery. After dark
she did not dare to sit up late at night lest she bum too much candle. She was too conscientious to shirk even the
smallest part of her share of the housework, but she rushed through it now so fast that she was panting as she
climbed the stairs to her little room. It was weeks before the little square began to show the pattern.
Finally, she could
wait no longer, and one evening ventured to bring her work down beside the fire where the family
sat, hoping that good fortune would give her a place near the tallow candles on the mantelpiece. She had reached the
last comer of that first square and her needle flew in and out with nervous speed. To her relief no one noticed her.
As she stood up with the others, the square fell from her trembling old hands and fluttered to the table. Up to that
moment Mchetabel had laboured in the purest spirit of selfless adoration of an ideal. The emotional shock given to
her by her sister's-in-law cry of admiration as she held the work toward
the candle to examine it, was as much
astonishment as joy to Mehetabel. As she lay that night in her narrow hard bed. too proud, too excited to sleep,
Mehetabel’s heart swelled and tears of joy ran down from her old eyes.