(Reading Skills) 20 marks

1. Read the passage given below. 8

Then all the windows of the grey wooden house (Miss Hilton used to live here. She expired last week.), were thrown open, a thing I had never seen before. At the end of the day a sign was nailed on the mango tree : FOR SALE. Nobody in the street knew Miss Hilton. While she lived, her front gate was always locked and no one ever saw her leave or saw anybody go in. So even if you wanted to, you couldn’t feel sorry and say that you missed Miss Hilton. When I think of her house I see just two colours. Grey and green. The green of the mango tree, the grey of the house and the grey of the high iron fence that prevented you from getting at the mangoes. If your cricket ball fell in Miss Hilton’s courtyard you never got it back. It wasn’t the mango season when Miss Hilton died. But we got back about ten or twelve of our cricket balls. The house was sold and we were prepared to dislike the new owners even before they came. I think we were a little worried. Already we had one resident of the street who kept on complaining about us to our parents. He complained that we played cricket on the pavement; and if we were not playing cricket he complained that we were making too much noise anyway. One afternoon when I came back from school Pal said, “Is a man and a woman. She pretty pretty, but he ugly like hell”. I didn’t see much. The front gate was open, but the windows were shut again. I heard a dog barking in an angry way. One thing was settled pretty quickly. Whoever these people were they would never be the sort of people to complain that we were making noise and disturbing their sleep.