A
On one of her trips to New York several years ago, Eudora Welty decided to take a couple of New York friends out to dinner.They settled in at a comfortable East Side cafe and within minutes, another customer was approaching their table.
“Hey, aren't you from Mississippi？” the elegant, whitehaired writer remembered being asked by the stranger.“I'm from Mississippi too.”
Without a second thought, the woman joined the Welty party.When her dinner partner showed up, she also pulled up a chair.
“They began telling me all the news of Mississippi，” Welty said.“I didn't know what my New York friends were thinking.”
Taxis on a rainy New York night are rarer than those in sunshine.By the time the group got up to leave, it was pouring outside.Welty's new friends immediately sent a waiter to find a cab.Heading back downtown toward her hotel, her bigcity friends were amazed at the turn of events that had changed their Big Apple dinner into a Mississippi state reunion(团聚)．
“My friends said: ‘Now we believe your stories，'” Welty added.“And I said: ‘Now you know.These are the people that make me write them.'”
Sitting on a sofa in her room, Welty, a slim figure in a simple gray dress, looked pleased with this explanation.
“I don't make them up，” she said of the characters in her fiction these last 50 or so years.“I don't have to.”
Beauticians，bartenders，piano players and people with purple hats, Welty's people come from afternoons spent visiting with old friends, from walks through the streets of her native Jackson, Miss, from conversations overheard on a bus.It annoys Welty that, at 78, her left ear has now given out.Sometimes, sitting on a bus or a train, she hears only a fragment(片段) of a particularly interesting story.
本文为记叙文，介绍了美国著名女作家Eudora Welty在纽约的一次经历，并以此作为背景说明她的创作源于生活。
21．What happened when Welty was with her friends at the cafe?
A．Two strangers joined her.
B．Her childhood friends came in.
C．A heavy rain ruined the dinner.
D．Some people held a party there.
解析 A 细节理解题。第三段中的the woman指的是第二段中的那个陌生人，根据第三段第二句可知，陌生女子的晚餐伙伴也加入了她们的行列中，因此有两位陌生人加入到了Welty和朋友的晚餐中，故选A项。
22．The underlined word “them” in Paragraph 6 refers to Welty's ________.
A．readers B．parties
C．friends D．stories
解析 D 代词指代题。画线词所在句的主语These指的就是像那两位陌生人那样的人，这些人的故事就是创作小说的素材，且只有stories与write搭配，故选D项。
23．What can we learn about the characters in Welty's fiction?
A．They live in big cities. B．They are mostly women.
C．They come from real life. D．They are pleasure seekers.
解析 C 推理判断题。根据最后两段内容可知，Welty小说中的人物源于真实的生活，故选C项。
