The Uneven Floor
Written by Studio AM.
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Her father's workshop still smelled of pine shavings. On the bench stood his last chair, glued and joined, waiting for its final trim, and in the order book Dana found the entry: a chair for Mr. Ellum, deposit paid. She had grown up sanding in this room. She decided she could finish it.
The mistake surfaced when she checked the legs: one back leg cut short by nearly a quarter inch. A slip of the saw, she assumed, from a man who had been ill for months. She trimmed the other three to match, set the chair on the workshop floor, and watched it stand perfectly still. Delivered, then. Done.
Mr. Ellum called two days later. The chair rocked, he said, in the corner where a chair had always stood, in a house that had been settling toward its garden for eighty years. The floor beneath one back corner rose in a small ridge. Your father, he added, came out last spring and measured the floor.
Dana went back to the order book. On the page before the entry, in pencil: a small diagram of a floor, four numbers, one corner circled. The short leg had never been an error. It was the fit. She copied the numbers and started over, building the chair, this time, for the house it would live in, not for the level floor of the shop.
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Questions
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Question 1 of 4
What is the main idea of this story?
The answer is A: Dana corrects what looks like her father's error, then learns the flaw was a deliberate fit for a particular house.
The story turns on a reversal: the short leg reads as a mistake, Dana levels it, and the diagram reveals it was the fit. Her rebuild at the end shows what she learned.
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Question 2 of 4
Why did the chair stand still in the workshop but rock at Mr. Ellum's house?
The answer is C: Dana's equal legs fitted the flat shop floor, but one corner met a raised patch in the house.
The raised patch creates uneven contact between the four feet and the floor. A uniform slope alone would not explain the rocking.
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Question 3 of 4
What does “settling” mean when describing the house?
The answer is B: sinking slowly and unevenly over time
The phrase 'toward its garden' gives a direction of movement, and 'for eighty years' gives it a timescale. The house has been slowly sinking to one side, which is why its floor slopes.
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Question 4 of 4
What did Dana find on the page before the order-book entry?
The answer is D: A small diagram of a floor, four numbers, and one corner circled
The story lists the page's contents exactly: a small diagram of a floor, four numbers, one corner circled. The other options name things mentioned elsewhere or not at all.
Score: none answered yet.