Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow: Question 5

‘And yesterday I had such a hiding. The master took me by the hair and dragged me out into the yard and beat me with the stirrup-strap because by mistake I went to sleep while rocking their baby. And one day last week the mistress told me to gut a herring and I began from the tail and she picked up the herring and rubbed my face with the head. The other apprentices make fun of me, they send me to the tavern for vodka and make me steal the master’s cucumbers and the master beats me with the first thing he finds. And there is nothing to eat. They give me bread in the morning and gruel for dinner and in the evening bread again, but I never get tea or cabbage soup. They gobble it all up themselves.

1. Why did the master beat Vanka?
2. What did the cruel mistress do to Vanka?
3. How did his fellow apprentices behave to him?
4. Identify the sentence from the passage which says that Vanka is not well fed by his master.
5. Read the conversation between Vanka and his mistress.
Mistress: Why did you gut the herring from its tail?
Vanka: I have seen my mother doing so.
Now, complete the sentences given below.
a. The mistress asked Vanka ___________________________________.
b. Vanka replied ______________________________________________.

5. Read the sentence from the passage.

The Milky Way stood out as clearly as if newly scrubbed for the holiday. Now, write a sentence using ‘as if .

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Answer key

Question 5
1. Vanka slept while rocking their baby.
2. She rubbed his face with the head of a herring.
3. Made fun of him, send him to the tavern for vodka, made him steal the master’s cucumbers which provoked the master to punish him.
4. ‘They give me bread in the morning and gruel formdinner and in the evening bread again, but I never get tea or cabbage soup.’
5. a. The mistress asked Vanka why he had gutted the herring from its tail.
b. Vanka replied that he had seen his mother doing that.