(1)

Mr Johnson was a rich old man. He lived in a beautiful house in the country with lots of servants, but his wife was dead, and he did not have any children.

Then he died suddenly, and people said, ‘His servants killed him, because they wanted his money.’

But the servants said, ‘No, he killed himself.’

The police came and asked the servants a lot of questions, and after a few weeks, there was a big trial. There were two famous lawyers and several important witnesses.

‘Tell me,’ one of the lawyers said to a witness one day, ‘did Mr Johnson often talk to himself when he was alone?’

‘I don’t know,’ the witness answered at once.

‘You don’t know?’ the lawyer repeated angrily. ‘You don’t know? But you were his best friend, weren’t you? Why don’t you know?’

‘Because I was never with him when he was alone,’ the witness answered.

(2)

Ted worked in a factory in a big town. He liked fishing very much, and was very good at it. Whenever he was free, he went down to the small river behind the factory and tried to catch some fish, but there were very few there, because the water was dirty. Then one summer he went to the seaside during his holidays and stayed at a small, cheap hotel.

     ‘I’ve never fished in the sea before,’ he thought. ‘It will be rather different from fishing in our river.’

     On the first day he caught a lot of fish and was very happy. He gave to the hotel, and they cooked them for all the guests, and they enjoyed them very much. After that, he did this every day. But when Ted got his bill at the end of the week, he saw on it:

     ‘For oil to fry fish (7days): £3.50.’

 (3)

When Billy was very small, he loved pictures. His mother often drew some for him on old pieces of paper. She was very bad at drawing, but Billy enjoyed her pictures and always wanted more.

Then, when he was a little older, Billy’s mother gave him some pencils and a drawing book, and he began drawing pictures too, but they were never good.

When Billy was five years old, his mother gave him a small blackboard, some pieces of chalk and a duster. He liked those very much. One day he was trying to draw a picture of his father on the blackboard. He drew lines and rubbed them out, drew more and rubbed those out too for ten minutes, but when he looked at his picture he was not happy.

‘Well,’ he said at last to his mother, ‘I’ll put a tail on it and make it a monkey.’

It was winter, and Mrs Hermann wanted to do a lot of shopping, so she waited until it was Saturday, when her husband was free, and she took him to the shops with her to pay for everything and to carry her parcels. They went to a lot of shops, and Mrs Hermann bought a lot of things. She often stopped and said, ‘Look, Joe! Isn’t that beautiful!’

     He then answered, ‘All right, dear. How much is it?’ and took his money out to pay for it.

     It was dark when they came out the last shop, and Mr Hermann was tired and thinking about other things, like a nice drink by the side of a warm fire at home. Suddenly his wife looked up at the sky and said, ‘Look at that beautiful moon, Joe!’

     Without stopping, Mr Hermann answered, ‘All right, dear. How much is it?’