Read the extract and give brief answers to the questions 26－29 that follow.

Mystery of the White Gardenia

Marsha Aron

Every year on my birthday , from the time I turned 12 , a white gardenia was delivered to my house in Bethesda , Md. No card or note came with it. Calls to the florist were always in vain 一 it was a cash purchase. After a while I stopped trying to discover the sender' s identity and just delighted in the beauty and heady perfume of that´ one magical , perfect flower nestled in soft pick tissue paper.

But I never stopped imagining who the anonymous giver might be. Some of the happiest moments were spent daydreaming about someone wonderful and exciting but too shy or eccentric to make known his or her identity.

My mother contributed to these imaginings. She' d ask me if there was someone for whom I had done a special kindness who might be showing appreciation. Perhaps the

neighbor l' d helped when she was unloading a car full of groceries. Or maybe it was the old man across the street whose mail I retrieved during the winter so he wouldn't have to venture down his icy steps. As a teen-ager , though , i had more fun speculating that it might be a boy i had a crush on or one who had noticed me even though i didn´t know him.

When 1 was 17 , a boy broke my heart. The night he called for the last time , i cried myself to sleep. When i awoke in the morning , there was a message scribbled on my mirror in red lipstick: Heartily know , when half-gods go , the gods arrive. i thought about that

quotation by Emerson for a long time , and until my heart healed , i left it where my mother had written it. When i finally went to get the glass cleaner , my mother knew everything was all right again.

I don' t remember ever slamming my door in anger at her and shouting , "You just don' t understand!" because she did understand.

One month before my high-school graduation , my father died of a heart attack. My feelings ranged from grief to abandonment , fear and overwhelming anger that my dad was missing some of the most important events in my life. I became completely uninterested in my upcoming graduation , the senior class play and the prom. But my mother , in the midst of her own grief , would not hear of my skipping any of those things.

The day before my father died， my mother and i had gone shopping for a prom dress. We found a spectacular one , with yards and yards of doted swiss in red , white and blue , it made me feel like Scarlet 0' Hara ,

but it was the wrong size. When my father died iforgot about the dress.

My mother didn't . The day before the prom , i found that dress 一 in the right size - draped majestically over the living room sofa. It wasn't just delivered , still in the box. It was presented to me - beautifully , artistically , lovingly. i didn' t care if 1 had a new dress or no. But my mother did.

She wanted her children to feel loved and lovable , creative and imaginative , imbued with a sense that there was magic in the world and beauty even in the face of adversity. In truth. my mother wanted her children to see themselves much like the gardenia 一 lovely ，strong ,

and perfect - with an aura of magic and perhaps a bit of mystery.

My mother died ten days after i was married. i was 22. That was the year the gardenias stopped coming.

26. When did the narrator discover the mystery of the white gardenias？ Why was the sender' s identity kept secret？

27. When and how did the father die？ How did the narrator feel at her father' s death？

28. What traits of the mother' s characters are highlighted in the story？ Cite examples from the story to support your answer.

29. What do you think of the title of the story？ What does the gardenia symbolize in the story？

参考答案：

26. The narrator got to know the truth when she was 22. It was her mother who sent her the flowers. She kept it a secret so that the daughter could have the self-knowledge of her own good deeds as she speculated about who the sender might be.

27. The father died of heart attack close to her graduation from high school. She felt sad , disappointed that her father would not experience the important events in her life.

28.a. The mother' s wisdom: She thought of a wise way to encourage kindness in her daughter: to send flowers secretly; or she wisely scribbled a quotation from Emerson on her daughter' s mirror instead of directly talking her teenage daughter into accepting the loss of her boyfriend.

b. Her strength in the face of adversities: she stood strong when her husband died.

29.It is a good / helpful title. The title tickles the reader' s curiosity. OR It' s not a good title. When we are told of the "mystery" in the title , our curiosity is destroyed. The gardenia is the essential symbol in the story , helping to bring about the theme of the story: mother' s love. The gardenia symbolizes the qualities that the mother hoped for her daughter , qualities such as magical (aura of magic , a bit of mystery) , loving , strong , perfect , etc.