Eager WattleNo. 05

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Three questions from this paper

Pulled straight from this paper, options and all. The correct answers appear in the review screen after you sit it.

1. Q1

   Twelve-year-old Laura has come from her home in the country to board at the Ladies' College in Melbourne. Her godmother has just said goodbye, and Mrs Gurley, the College's stern Lady Superintendent, is leading Laura upstairs to unpack her box.

   What really occupied her, as she trudged behind, was how she could please this hard-faced woman and make her like her, for the desire to please, to be liked by all the world, was the strongest her young soul knew. 'What a VERY large place this is!' she said in an insinuating voice. She hoped the admiration, thus subtly expressed in the form of surprise, would flatter Mrs Gurley, as a kind of co-proprietor; but the latter seemed to have gone deaf and dumb, and marched on up the stairs, like a walking stone-statue.

   On the top floor Mrs Gurley went down on her knees before Laura's box and began to pass the contents to Laura, directing her where to lay and hang them. Overawed by such complaisance, Laura moved nimbly about the room, taking care to be back at the box to the minute. And her promptness was rewarded; the stern face seemed to relax. At the mere hint of this, Laura grew warm through and through; and as she could neither control her feelings nor keep them to herself, she rushed to an extreme and overshot the mark. 'I've got an apron like that. I think they're so pretty,' she said cordially, pointing to the one Mrs Gurley wore.

   The latter abruptly stopped her work and gave Laura one of the dreaded looks over her glasses, as though she were only now beginning to see her. 'Little gels,' said Mrs Gurley, 'little gels — are required — to wear white aprons — when they come here! And I should like to know, if your mother has never taught you, that it is very rude to point, and also to remark on what people wear.' Laura went scarlet: if there was one thing she, Mother, all of them prided themselves on, it was the good manners that had been instilled into them since their infancy. The rough reproof seemed to scorch her.

   She went to and fro more timidly than before. 'Why, what is this?' asked Mrs Gurley freezingly, and held up to view — with the tips of her fingers, Laura thought — a small, black Prayer Book. 'Pray, are you not a dissenter?' 'Well ... no, I'm not,' said Laura, in a tone of intense apology. Here, at last, was her chance. 'But it really doesn't matter a bit. I can go to another church quite well. I even think I'd rather. For a change. And the service isn't so long — except the sermon,' she added truthfully. Had she denied religion altogether, the look Mrs Gurley bent on her could not have been more annihilating.

   • ¹ complaisance: an obliging willingness to help
   • ² gels: Mrs Gurley's grand way of pronouncing 'girls'
   • ³ dissenter: someone who did not belong to the Church of England (whose service book is the Prayer Book); the College belonged to a different, 'dissenting' church

   From 'The Getting of Wisdom' by Henry Handel Richardson (1910)

   As they climb the stairs, Laura ventures: 'What a VERY large place this is!' How does Mrs Gurley receive the remark?

   1. AShe walks on as though she has not heard.
   2. BShe corrects Laura for speaking out of turn.
   3. CHer stern face seems to relax a little at the remark.
   4. DShe answers with a short, chilly word or two.
2. Q2

   Which writer very nearly ruined something that was quietly succeeding, because it looked as though nothing was going on?

   1. AExtract A
   2. BExtract B
   3. CExtract C
   4. DExtract D
3. Q3

   Which writer's companion stayed completely untroubled by the wait, despite having personally added to its length?

   1. AExtract A
   2. BExtract B
   3. CExtract C
   4. DExtract D