After returning from her round trip, the angry woman stood outside the ticket office of the station. “The railway owes me 12 pounds，” she said to Harry Jenks, the young man working at the office. “You sold me a ticket for May 22nd, but there was no ship from Jersey that night. So my daughter and I had to stay in a hotel. It cost me 12 pounds.”

    Harry was worried. He remembered selling the woman a return ticket. “Come into the office, Madam，” he said politely. “I'll just check the Jersey timetable for May 22nd.”

    The woman and her little girl followed him inside. She was quite right, as Harry soon discovered. There was no sailing on May 22nd. How could he have made such a careless mistake? He shouldn't have sold her a ticket for that day. Wondering what to do, he smiled at the child. “You look sunburnt，” he said to her. “Did you have a nice holiday in Jersey？”

    “Yes，” she answered, shyly. “The beach was lovely. And I can swim too！”

    “That's fine，” said Harry. “My little girl can't swim a bit yet. Of course，she's only three ...”

    “I'm four，” the child said proudly. “I'll be four and a half.”

    Harry turned to the mother. “I remember your ticket, Madam，” he said. “But you didn't get one for your daughter, did you？”

    “Err, well ...” the woman looked at the child. “I mean …, she hasn't started school yet. She's only four.”

    “A four-year-old child must have a ticket, Madam. A child's return ticket from Jersey costs .., let me see ... 13.50 pounds. The law is the law, but since the mistake is mine ...”

    The woman stood up, took the child's hand and left the office.

    Driving along a busy Houston road, my two little girls became hungry at noon. They1no time in letting me know,2“McDonald's, McDonald's.” So I began searching for the3McDonald's. Suddenly I realized that almost every intersection (十字路口) we passed through was4by a beggar. If my two little girls were hungry, then all these beggars must be hungry, too.

After finding a McDonald's and5two Happy Meals for my girls, I ordered a(n)6 15 lunches and set out to7them. Then, we stopped beside a beggar and gave him the lunch. After that, we8our way to the next intersection.

    9we came to the end of our “route”, there was a10standing there, asking for change. We handed her our 11lunch bag. “No one has 12done anything like this for me before,” she said with 13. I replied, “Well, I'm glad that we were the14.” Feeling uneasy, and wanting to move the conversation15, I asked, “So, when do you think you'll eat your lunch?”

    She looked at me with her16brown eyes and said, “I'm not going to eat this lunch. I have a little girl of my own at home and she just17McDonald's, but I can never buy it for her18I don't have the money. But you know tonight she is going to have McDonald's!”

    So many times I had 19whether our acts of kindness were too small to make a difference. Yet at this moment, I recognized the20of Mother Teresa's words: “We cannot do great things—only small things with great love.”

— Of course. After all, it has paid off.