My wife and I used to feel that it was impossible to be a true friend to someone whose name we didn't know. How wrong we were! Years of Sunday-morning bus trips through the city with the same group of “nameless” people have changed our thinking. Before the bus takes off, we all join in a conversation: where’s the silent woman who sits up front and never responds to our cheery greetings? Here she comes. Her worn clothing suggests she doesn't have much money to spare, but she always takes an extra cup of coffee for the driver.
We get smiles from a Mexican couple as they get on the bus hand in hand. When they get off, they’re still holding hands. The woman was pregnant late last year, and one day her change of shape confirmed that she’d delivered the child. We even felt a little pride at the thought of our extended family.
For many months, our only sadness lay in our inability to establish the same friendship with the silent woman at the front of the bus. Then, one evening, we went to a fish restaurant. We were shown to a table alongside someone sitting alone. It was the woman from the bus.
We greeted her with friendly familiarity we’d shown all year, but this time her face softened, then a shy smile. When she spoke, the words escaped awkwardly from her lips. All at once we realized why she hadn’t spoken to us before. Talking was hard for her.
Over dinner, we learned the stay of a single mother with a disabled son who was receiving special care away from home. She missed him desperately, she explained. “I love him… and he loves me, even though he doesn’t express it very well,” she murmured. “Lots of us have that problem, don’t we? We don’t say what we want to say, what we should be saying. And that’s not good enough.” The candles flared on our tables. Our fish had never tasted better. But the atmosphere grew pleasant, and when we parted as friends—we shared names.
小题1:All the following statements can describe the woman except ______.
A．poor
B．warm -hearted
C．silent
D．cold小题2:The underlined word “establish” in the 3th paragraph has the same meaning as_________.
A．keep
B．discover
C．set up
D．accept小题3:The woman had the same problem with her son in the way that ______.
A．they both disabled people
B．they both had some difficulty in expressing
C．they both liked bus travel
D．they both brought interest to the passengers小题4:Which of the following might be the best title of this passage?
A．Friends of the Road
B．The Silent Woman on the Bus
C．Going to Work by Bus
D．Different Kinds of Friendship
