instruction:
You are given an English sentence with a blank, and you need to predict the missing word. After completing, the whole sentence should be gramatically correct and non-ambiguous.
question:
peter had asked him of course for matthew cuthbert had never been known to volunteer information about anything in his whole life and yet here ____ matthew cuthbert at half past three on the afternoon of a busy day placidly driving over the hollow and up the hill
answer:
was


question:
a child of about eleven garbed in ____ very short very tight very ugly dress of yellowish gray wincey she wore a faded brown sailor hat and beneath the hat extending down her back were two braids of very thick decidedly red hair
answer:
a


question:
anybody who went out of it or into it had to pass over that hill road and so run the unseen gauntlet of missus rachel's all seeing eye she ____ sitting there one afternoon in early june the sun was coming in at the window warm and bright
answer:

was