52] A Story + Write a Summary

Read the following text, and then answer the questions.

There was once a very rich old lady whom husband had died, and whose children had married and gone to live in foreign countries. When she reached the age of eighty and was too old to live alone and look after a house herself, this rich old widow went to live in an expensive and very comfortable hotel next to the sea, in the south of the country, where it was not too cold in winter.

This rich old lady had a pair of nasty, ugly dogs, which used to growl and bark at everybody, but which she loved very much, although nobody else did. They lived in the hotel with her and went wherever she did. 

After the old lady and her dogs had been at the hotel nearly a year, a new young waiter came to work there and began to do everything that he was able to do to help the obl lady and to be nice to her. He carried her blankets and pillows for her, helped her to get into and out of the car which she hired when she wanted to go for a drive, and even pretended to like her unpleasant dogs and offered to look after them in his free time. He fed them, cleaned them and took them for daily walks for some years.

The young waiter did not doubt that, whe the rich-old lady died, she would leave him a lot of money, to pay him for everything that he had done for her and her dogs. When she died a few years later, he soon discovered that she had left him only two things, the two things which she loved most in the world, and which she thought he loved too, her dogs. All her money and jewellery went to her children, who had never done anything for her. 

A. Answer the following questions.

1. How old was the rich lady?

2. Where was she staying?

3. Why was the new waiter so nice to the old rich lady?

4. What kind of animals did the lady have?

5. Who had got the old lady's money and jewellery at last?

B. Summarise the story in sentences of your own.