CBSE Class 9 English Fiction Keeping it from Harold

Fiction

UNIT-4

1. Before you read "Keeping It From Harold", the teacher will encourage you to  answer or discuss the following.

 What are the different weight categories in Boxing? Have you ever heard the song whose lyrics go like...."He floats like a butterfly and  stings like a bee"? Who does 'he' refer to? He is also know as 'The Greatest' boxer  of all time. What was his original name? How many times did he win the World  Heavyweight Belt?

 Find out from your friend if he /she watches WWE and who is his/her favourite  wrestler. Also find out why he/she likes this wrestler. Discuss with your friend as to why these wrestlers have such a large fan following.  Has the perception of people changed over the century with respect to those who  fight in the ring?

2. Now read the story

1. "Ma!" Mrs. Bramble looked up, beaming with a kind of amiable fat-headedness. 

A domestic creature, wrapped up in Bill, her husband, and Harold, her son. At the  present moment only the latter was with her. He sat on the other side of the table,  his lips gravely pursed and his eyes a trifle cloudy behind their spectacles. Before  him on the red tablecloth lay an open book. His powerful brain was plainly busy.

2. "Yes, dearie?"

3. "Will you hear me?"

4. Mrs. Bramble took the book.

5. "Yes, mother will hear you, precious."

6. A slight frown, marred the smoothness of Harold Bramble's brow. It jarred upon  him, this habit of his mother's of referring to herself in the third person, as if she  were addressing a baby, instead of a young man of ten who had taken the spelling   and dictation prize last term on his head.

7. He  cleared  his  throat  and  fixed  his  eyes  upon  the  cut-glass  hangings  of  the  chandelier.

8. "Be good, sweet maid," he began, with the toneless rapidity affected by youths of  his age when reciting poetry…..

9. "You do study so hard, dearie, you'll give yourself a headache. Why don't you take  a nice walk by the river for half an hour, and come back nice and fresh?"

10. The  spectacled  child  considered  the  point  for  a  moment  gravely.  Then,  nodding,  he  arranged  his  books  in  readiness for his return and went out.  The front door closed with a  decorous softness.

11. It was a constant source of amazement  to Mrs. Bramble that she should have  brought such a prodigy as Harold into  the world. Harold was so different from  ordinary  children,  so  devoted  to  his  books,  such  a  model  of  behaviour,  so  altogether admirable. The only drawback was that his very 'perfection' had made  necessary a series of evasions and even deliberate falsehoods on the part of  herself and her husband, highly distasteful to both. They were lovers of truth, but  they had realized that there are times when truth must be sacrificed. At any cost,  the facts concerning Mr. Bramble's profession must be kept from Harold.

12. While he was a baby it had not mattered so much. But when he began to move  about and take notice, Mrs. Bramble said to Mr. Bramble, "Bill, we must keep it  from Harold." A little later, when the child had begun to show signs of being about  to become a model of goodness and intelligence, and had already taken two  prizes at the Sunday-school, the senior curate of the parish, meeting Mr. Bramble  one morning, said nervously-for, after all, it was a delicate subject to broach, "ErBramble, I think, on the whole, it would be as well to-er-keep it from Harold."

13. And only the other day, Mrs. Bramble's brother, Major Percy Stokes, dropping in  for a cup of tea, had said, "I hope you are keeping it from Harold. It is the least you  can do", and had gone on to make one or two remarks about men of  wrathwhich,  considering that his cheek-bones were glistening with Mr. Bramble's buttered  toast, were in poor taste. But Percy was like that. Enemies said that he liked the  sound of his own voice.

14. Certainly he was very persuasive. Mr. Bramble had fallen in with the suggestion  without  demur. In private life he was the mildest and most obliging of men, and  always yielded to everybody. The very naming of Harold had caused a sacrifice on  his part.

15. When it was certain that he was about to become a father, he had expressed a  desire that the child should be named John, if a boy, after  Mr John L. Sullivan,  or,  if a girl, Marie, after Miss Marie Lloyd.But Mrs Bramble saying that Harold was  such a sweet name, he had withdrawn his suggestions with the utmost goodhumour.

16. Nobody could help liking this excellent man; which made it all the greater pity that  his walk in life was of such a nature that it simply had to be kept from Harold. 

17. He was a professional boxer. That was the trouble.

18. Before the coming of Harold, he had been proud of being a professional boxer. His  ability to paste his fellow-man in the eye while apparently meditating an attack on  his stomach, and vice versa, had filled him with that genial glow of self-satisfaction  which comes to  philanthropistsand other benefactors of the species. It had  seemed  to  him  a  thing  on  which  to  congratulate  himself  that  of  all  London's  teeming millions there was not a man, weighing eight stone four, whom he could  not overcome in a twenty-round contest. He was delighted to be the possessor of  a left hook which had won the approval of the newspapers.

Please refer to the link below - CBSE Class 9 English Fiction Keeping it from Harold