Passage Three
Anna liked the look of the house as soon as she saw it. Jack knew that before she said anything. The plain white walls, the black window frames and door-the good taste of that combination had always pleased her.
"It's a nice family house, she said. "One can see it's been well lived in.
Fifty-seven Eden Square was a tall narrow house of three storeys in the middle of a row facing small park. It was in what a house agent would call a popular rather than a fashionable area. The little front gate was open, broken. They went in and up a few stone steps to the front door. They could see in through one of the sitting-room windows from which a net curtain had fallen at one side. The large room was almost bare. A dirty green carpet half covered the floor. From an old brick fireplace a gas-fire had been pulled out into the room. The wallpaper was dark green, dirty and damp-looking. There was no furniture. Silently they stared in. Then Jack tried the front door. It was locked.
"Any empty house up for sale needs cleaning, said Anna. "That's part of the fun of buying. You can make it look so different. This place will be a lot better when cleaned up. How much do you think it'll cost?"
"Well, it's about eighty years old, and modernized probably. "He stepped back and looked up. "It should have three or four large bedrooms, as large as I think bedrooms ought to be, and one or two small ones. That is, if it wasn't used as a guesthouse in the days before people started going to Spain for their holidays, I think it would cost about fifteen thousand. It depends on how modern it is inside. We'll get the keys and have a look, shall we?"
They did so the following afternoon. In an earlier time, the spacious house had had large, airy bedrooms. All four of these were now divided up by wooden wall and ugly passages. Each big window looking onto the park was shared by two or even three rooms. There were in all eighteen tiny bedrooms, each with a tiny washbasin and water: sleeping space for thirty or so holidaymakers.
"Little cages,"Anna said. She did not like the place at all.
What did Anna and Jack plan to do?
A.They planned to sell the house. B.They planned to run a small hotel. C.They planned to buy a family house. D.They planned to find a small hotel for their holiday.正确答案C
