Grade 9 reading comprehension worksheets

1 At six o'clock on a Saturday in July, Callie Novak tied on a green apron that still showed the creases from its package and stepped nervously onto the floor of the Lakeview Diner. She had studied the menu for a week, but nobody had warned her about the noise: the hiss of the grill, the clatter of plates, and the little bell that Hector, the cook, slapped whenever an order was ready. Dot, who had waited tables at the Lakeview for twenty-two years, handed her a coffeepot before she had taken three steps. "Rule one," Dot said. "Never walk anywhere with empty hands."

2 Throughout the first hour, Callie forgot rule one almost constantly. She walked to booth six to take an order, carried the ticket back to the kitchen, returned with the ice water she had forgotten, and then hurried back again for straws. Dot passed her four times, never hurrying, and each time she was carrying something: a coffeepot, a stack of clean mugs, a damp rag, a bottle of ketchup for a table that hadn't yet noticed it needed one. By seven-thirty, Callie's feet ached, a water glass had slid off her tray and shattered beside the register, and she had served a plate of pancakes to a man who had ordered a grilled cheese. He only laughed and insisted he'd been considering pancakes anyway, but her face burned with embarrassment for twenty minutes afterward.

3 The rush arrived at nine, when the summer softball game ended and players in muddy uniforms crowded into every available booth. Hector's bell rang so frequently that it seemed like one long note. Somewhere in that hour, Callie stopped worrying about how she appeared to everyone and started concentrating only on what came next. On her way to deliver two burgers, she grabbed the coffeepot and refilled three mugs at the counter. On the return trip, she cleared an abandoned table and wiped it down. She did not notice that she was doing it.

4 By a quarter to twelve, the diner was nearly deserted. A nurse in blue scrubs sat at the counter with a slice of cherry pie, and Dot was rolling silverware into paper napkins with fingers that moved faster than Callie could follow. "You broke a glass and fed a man the wrong dinner," Dot said without looking up. "That's about average. You coming back next Saturday?" Callie said she was, and she was surprised to realize that she genuinely meant it.

5 When Hector finally switched off the grill, Callie untied her apron, now decorated with syrup stains, and collected her bag. Halfway to the door, she stopped, turned around, and carried a tub of dirty mugs into the kitchen. Dot watched her pass and said nothing, but she was smiling.

1 Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river! I still keep in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our left was densely wooded, and the sombre shadow that fell from this forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor that was flowing from the sun. …

2 I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture. The world was new to me, and I had never seen anything like this at home. But as I have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river's face; another day came when I ceased altogether to note them. Then, if that sunset scene had been repeated, I should have looked upon it without rapture, and should have commented upon it, inwardly, after this fashion: This sun means that we are going to have wind to-morrow; that floating log means that the river is rising, small thanks to it; that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one of these nights, if it keeps on stretching out like that; those tumbling "boils" show a dissolving bar and a changing channel there; the lines and circles in the slick water over yonder are a warning that that troublesome place is shoaling up dangerously; that silver streak in the shadow of the forest is the "break" from a new snag, and he has located himself in the very best place he could have found to fish for steamboats; that tall dead tree, with a single living branch, is not going to last long, and then how is a body ever going to get through this blind place at night without the friendly old landmark?

3 No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river. All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat. Since those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart. What does the lovely flush in a beauty's cheek mean to a doctor but a "break" that ripples above some deadly disease? … And doesn't he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lost most by learning his trade?