NCERT Book Class 9 English (Beehive) Chapter 3 Rain on the Roof; The Little Girl

3. The Little Girl

BEFORE YOU READ
• Do you feel you know your parents better now, than when
you were much younger? Perhaps you now understand the
reasons for some of their actions that used to upset you earlier.
• This story about a little girl whose feelings for her father
change from fear to understanding will probably find an echo
in every home.

1. TO the little girl he was a figure to be feared and a figure to be feared:
avoided. Every morning before going to work he came a person to be feared
into her room and gave her a casual kiss, to which
she responded with “Goodbye, Father”. And oh,
there was a glad sense of relief when she heard the
noise of the carriage growing fainter and fainter
down the long road!
In the evening when he came home she stood
near the staircase and heard his loud voice in the
hall. “Bring my tea into the drawing-room... Hasn’t
the paper come yet? Mother, go and see if my paper’s
out there — and bring me my slippers.”
2. “Kezia,” Mother would call to her, “if you’re a good
girl you can come down and take off father’s boots.”
Slowly the girl would slip down the stairs, more slip down: come
slowly still across the hall, and push open the down quietly and
unwillingly
drawing-room door.
By that time he had his spectacles on and looked
at her over them in a way that was terrifying to
the little girl.
“Well, Kezia, hurry up and pull off these boots
and take them outside. Have you been a good
girl today?”
“I d-d-don’t know, Father.”