Read the extracts given below and answer the questions that follow:

When I casually mentioned this to a friend, he casually replied that I had better get one in the Tigris marshes, for there they were as common as mosquitoes, and were often tamed by the Arabs. We were going to Basra to the Consulate-General to collect and answer our mail from Europe. At the Consulate-General we found that my friend’s mail had arrived but that mine had not.

1. What was ‘they’?
2. Where could the author get ‘one’?
3.  Find the exact word from the extract which means ‘domesticated’?
4. What did the author find at the Consulate- General?

OR

(There is a languide, emerald sea, where the sole inhabitant is me a marmaid drifting blissfully.)
Question:

1. Who does ‘me’ stand for?
2. How does ‘me’ feel?
3. Who is ‘me’ compared to?
4. Which word in the extract means opposite of ‘sorrowfully’?

Read the following passages carefully and answer the questions that follow:
I watched, amazed; in less than a minute he had turned the tap far enough to produce a trickle of water, and after a moment or two achieved the full flow. He had been lucky to turn the tap the right way.

1. What surprised the narrator?
2. Who does ‘He’ here refer?
3. Find a word from the passage that means ‘surprised’.

Read the following passages carefully and answer the questions that follow:
When I returned, there was an appalling spectacle. There was complete silence from the box, but from its airholes and chinks around the lid, blood had trickled and dried.

1. What incident does the narrator call as ‘an appalling spectacle’?
2. Why was there complete silence from the box?
3. What does the phrase ‘the appalling spectacle’ mean?

Read the following passages carefully and answer the questions that follow:
She was the very queen of her kind. She suggested that I might prefer to have my pet on my knee, and I could have kissed her hand in the depth of my gratitude. But, not knowing otters, I was quite unprepared for what followed.

1. What was the narrator completely unprepared for?
2. What did she suggest to the narrator?
3. What does the expression ‘the very queen of her kind’, mean?

Read the following passages carefully and answer the questions that follow:
I was craning my neck trying to follow the hunt when suddenly I heard from my feet a distressed chitter of recognition and welcome, and Mij bounded on to my knee and began to nuzzle my face and my neck.

1. What was the narrator doing?
2. What does expression ‘distressed chitter of recognition’ indicate?
3. Find a word from the passage which means ‘surrounded’.

Read the following passages carefully and answer the questions that follow:
On his way home, but never on his way out, Mij would tug me to this wall, jump on to it, and gallop the full length of its thirty yards, to the hopeless distraction both of pupils and of staff within.

1. What would Mij do habitually?
2. What would distract the pupils and the staff?
3. Find a word in the passage that means ‘to move fast’.

How did Maxwell get the otter?

How did ‘the opening of that sack’ change Maxwell’s life?

Why was the otter named as Maxwell’s otter?

How did Mijbil get accustomed to Maxwell and his new surroundings?

How did Mijbil behave with water?

Or

What happened when Maxwell took Mijbil to the bathroom?