Tom was three years old. He liked to watch TV with his parents after supper, but his parents never let him stay long. Mother would say, "It's eight o'clock now. It's time for you to go to bed, Tom." "But why don't you go to bed, too?" Tom always asked. "We are adults  ," mother would say, "And adults go to bed late." One evening Tom asked his mother for an apple. "But it's too late," his mother didn't want to give him anything to eat at bedtime. "The apples are already asleep." "But not all of them, Mom." Tom said, "The baby apples are perhaps asleep, but their parents are surely awake." One evening Tom asked his mother for  _  .
an egg an apple an orange a pear