It was a lovely spring afternoon.My classmates and I were playing happily on the
playground when I let out a cry, “Ow!Ow!Something in my shoe is biting me.”
Everyone was shocked by the cry.They took me into a classroom and were about to
take off my__11__. “Which foot is it?”One asked “let us have a look.”
Suddenly, I remembered the holes in__12__socks.My family was very poor during
those years.I wore welfare socks,which cost only a little,but those_13__welfare socks didn’t last long.They soon had __14__at he bottom.
I refused to take off my shoe. I__15__stand others seeing the holes in my sock.I tried to hold back my tears Yet,each time the thing__16__my shoe bit me,tears raced down my face.
My teacher,Miss Diane,hurried into the__17___, “What’s wrong? ”She asked.
“Something is biting her right foot,__18__she doesn’t let us take off her shoe,”One of my classmates answered.
Miss Diane lived next door to me.She___19__everything about my family .She put both hands on my shaking shoulders and __20__into my painful and hopeless eyes.
“Oh,yes,it must be a sock-eating ant,” She said,as if she had__21__seen the thing inside the shoe. “I had a bite from one of those ants.By the time I got my shoe off ,it had__22__almost the whole bottom off my sock.” My classmates nodded while they were listening to the teacher__23__,although they all looked a little puzzled.
Miss Diane took off my right shoe and sock and shook them over the dustbin.Two red ants __24__it.
“Just what I thought it.The ants have eaten part of her sock.”
When she stroked an alcohol cotton ball on the bites,she added, “You are such a 25__girl to take so many bites.”
The alcohol felt cool on the bites and a little girl’s pride was saved by the “sock-
eating ant ”story.