— Is John coming over this weekend?
— He should, but he _______ not. He seems to be busy these days.

An amazing teacher
Years ago a John Hopkins professor gave a group of graduate students this task: Go to the slums（贫民窟）. Took 200 boys, between the ages of 12 and 16, and 31  their background and environment, then 32  their chances for the future.
The students, after consulting social statistics, talking to the boys, and collecting much data， concluded that 90 percent of the boys would 33  some time in prison.
Twenty-five years later 34  group of graduate students was given the job of 35  the prediction. They went back to the same area. Some of the boys---by then 36 ---were still there, a few had died, some had moved away, but they got in touch with 180 of the 37 200.They found that only four of the group had ever been sent to 38 .
Why was it that these men, who had lived in a breeding place of crime, had such a surprisingly good record? The researchers were 39  told,“Well, there was a teacher…”
They pressed（追问）further, and found that in 75 percent of the cases it was the same woman. The researchers went to this teacher, now living in a home for retired teachers. How had she had this brilliant 40  on that group of children? Could she give them any reason why these boys should have remembered her?
“No,” she said,“No，I really couldn’t.”And then， thinking back 41  the years, she said musingly（沉思地）,42  to herself than to her questioners,“Ｉloved those boys…”

---I regret _____you John has been fired．
---I can hardly believe my ears．He’s such a fine worker．

We ______ John’s name on the race list yesterday but for his injury.

On the morning of November 18, 1755, an earthquake shock Boston. John Winthrop, a professor at Harvard College, felt the quake and awoke. “I rose”, Winthrop wrote, “and lighted a candle, looked at my watch, and found it to be 15minutes after four.” John Winthrop hurried downstairs to the grandfather clock. It had stopped three minutes before, at 4:12. Except for stopping the clock, the quake had only thrown a key from the mantel(壁炉台) to the floor.
The clock had stopped because Winthrop had put some long glass tubes he was using for an experiment into the case for safekeeping. The quake had knocked the tubes over and blocked the pendulum(钟摆).Winthrop, therefore, had the key on the floor. The quake had thrown it forward in the direction of the quake’ s motion by a shock coming from the northwest, perhaps in Canada.
【小题1】What does “it” in the second paragraph refer to?