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.

Let me give you an example: The kid on the street is ____ soccer
The answer to this example can be: playing
Here is why: This is the original sentence 'The kid on the street is playing soccer' So, we have correctly predicted the missing word to be 'soccer'

OK. solve this:
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