Questão 12

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

Quick Work

  Ted Robinson has been worried all the week. Last Tuesday he received a letter from the local police $\in$ which he was asked to call at the station. Ted wondered why he was wanted by the police, but he went to the station yesterday and now he is not worried any more.

  At the station, he was told by a smiling policeman that his bicycle had been found. Five days ago, the policeman told him, the bicycle was picked up $\in a$ small village four hundred miles away. It is now being sent to his home by train. Ted was most surprised when he heard the news and he was amused too, because he never expected the bicycle to be found. It was stolen twenty years ago when Ted was a boy of fifteen!

(Louis George Alexander. Practice and progress,1970. Adaptado.)

De acordo com o texto, a lacuna em “Ted had already ______________ trying to find his bicycle” é corretamente preenchida por