7th Standard, Supplementary Reading – 3
A Day’s Wait
(Ernest Hemingway)
Answer these questions.
- How old was Schatz? What disease was he suffering from?
Answer: Schatz was nine years old. He was suffering from fever.
- What is the relationship of the author with Schatz? Which line gives you that information?
Answer: Author is father of Schatz. The line ‘‘you don’t have to stay in here with me, Papa, if it bothers you.’’ gives us that information.
- How many capsules did the doctor prescribe? State the purpose of each one.
Answer: The doctor left three different medicines in different coloured capsules with instructions for giving them. One was to bring down the fever, another a purgative, the third to overcome an acid condition.
- How does the author describe Nature?
Answer: “It was a bright, cold day, the ground covered with a sleet that had frozen so that it seemed as if all the bare trees, the bushes, the cut brush and all the grass and the bare ground had been varnished with ice.” That is how the Author described the nature.
- “I took the young Irish setter up the road and along a frozen creek.” Who does the young Irish setter refer to?
Answer: The young Irish setter refers to a red Dog.
- Why did the writer go out of the house? What did he hunt?
Answer: The Writer thought perhaps his son Schatz was a little light-headed and after giving him the prescribed capsules at eleven o’clock he went out for a while. Writer was a little puzzled by the son’s behaviour as he decided to get him out of his room. He hunted two birds.
- What happened at the house in the absence of the writer?
Answer: In the absence of the writer the boy had refused to let anyone come into the room at the house. The father found his son in exactly the position he had left him, white-faced, but with the tops of his cheeks flushed by the fever, staring still, as he had stared, at the foot of the bed.
- What caused Schatz panic?
Answer: At school in France the boys told Schatz that you don’t live forty-four degrees temperature. The doctor had said that he had 102 degrees temperature. So the boy decided that he will die soon and became panic.
- How could the author convince Schatz that nothing was wrong with him?
Answer: The author convinced Schatz that nothing was wrong with him and there are two different thermometers to measure temperature. That’s a different thermometer what your friends are told. On that thermometer thirty-seven is normal. The doctor’s thermometer is a new one and in this thermometer 98 degree is normal. These two thermometers are like miles and kilometers. The boy was convinced from this explanation.
- What was the effect of the clarification on Schatz? Which lines tell us about the effect?
Answer: The father’s explanation made Schatz fearless from the death.
“But his gaze at the foot of the bed relaxed slowly. The hold over himself relaxed too….” These lines are tells us about the effect.
11. Are these statements true or false?
a. Schatz was suffering from Pneumonia. – False
b. Schatz liked his father reading to him. – False
c. The father shot down a fox when he was hunting. – False
d. The cat in the house accompanied his father when he went out hunting. – False
Think and answer
- How was Schatz really cured? Was it by medicine or by the clarification given by his father?
Answer: Schatz really cured by the clarification given by his father.
- Why didn’t the boy allow anyone into his room?
Answer: The boy thought that anyway he will die from the fever. He thought that if anyone comes contact with him, even they will also die. So the boy didn’t allow anyone into his room.
