Choose the most appropriate option to fill in the blanks:
______ had the vegetable seller set up his cart near the bus stand ______ the municipal van came to clear the road.
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → Hardly, when
Hardly ... when is a pair of joining words that go together. It shows that the second action came just after the first. The seller had only just set up his cart, and then the van came. “Hardly” is followed by “when”, not by “than”. When the sentence begins with “Hardly”, the helping verb comes before the subject: “had the vegetable seller set up”.
Complete sentence: Hardly had the vegetable seller set up his cart near the bus stand when the municipal van came to clear the road.