Quiz
Materials

CSSE 2001 English Paper

Click on “MATERIALS” above to see the comprehension text.
The passage is from ‘Kipps’ by H.G. Wells, published in 1905.
To the left of each line you will see the lines have been numbered.
This will help you when answering the questions.
Spend about 8 minutes reading the text.
You will have 40 minutes to complete the test.

In the following passage a young man, Kipps, has joined a woodwork evening class taught by the attractive Miss Walshingham. Read the passage carefully and then answer the questions . The passage is from ‘Kipps’ by H.G. Wells, published in 1905.

  1.    There came a time when she could not open one of the classroom windows. The man with the

  2.    black beard pored over his chipping heedlessly…

  3.    It did not take Kipps a moment to grasp his opportunity. He dropped his gouge and stepped

  4.    forward. “Let me,” he said…

  5.    He could not open the window either!

  6.    “Oh, please don’t trouble,” she said.

  7.    “Sno trouble,” he gasped.

  8.    Still the sash stuck. He felt his manhood was at stake. He gathered himself together for a

  9.    tremendous effort, and the pane broke with a snap, and he thrust his hand into the void beyond.

  10.    “There!” said Miss Walshingham, and the glass fell ringing into the courtyard below.

  11.    Then Kipps made to bring his hand back and felt the keen touch of the edge of the broken glass

  12.    at his wrist. He turned dolefully. “I’m tremendously sorry,” he said in answer to the accusation in

  13.    Miss Walshingham’s eyes. “I didn’t think it would break like that” – as if he had expected it to break in

  14.    some quite different and entirely more satisfactory manner. The boy with the gift of wood-carving,

  15.    having stared at Kipps’ face for a moment, became involved in a struggle with a giggle.

  16.    “You’ve cut your wrist,” she said with one of the girl-friends, standing up and pointing. She was a pleasant-

  17.    faced, greatly freckled girl, with a helpful disposition, and she said “You’ve cut your wrist” as brightly

  18.    as if she had been a trained nurse.

  19.    Kipps looked down, and saw a swift line of scarlet rush down his hand. He perceived the other

  20.    man student regarding this with magnified eyes. “You have cut your wrist,” said Miss Walshingham,

  21.    and Kipps regarding his damage with greater interest.

  22.    “He’s cut his wrist,” said the maiden lady to the lodging-house keeper, and seemed in doubt what

  23.    a lady should do. “It’s –”, she hesitated at the word ‘bleeding’, and nodded to the lodging-house keeper

  24.    instead.

  25.    “Dreadfully,” said the maiden lady, and she tried to look and tried not to look at the same time.

  26.    “Of course he’s cut his wrist,” said the lodging-house keeper, momentarily quite annoyed at

  27.    Kipps; and the other young lady, who thought Kipps rather common, went on quietly with her woodcutting

  28.    with an air of its being the proper thing to do – though nobody else seemed to know it.

  29.    “You must tie it up,” said Miss Walshingham.

  30.    “We must tie it up,” said the freckled girl.

  31.    “I ‘adn’t the slightest idea that window was going to break like that,” said Kipps, with candour.

  32.    “Nort the slightest.”

  33.    He glanced again at the blood on his wrist, and it seemed to him that it was on the very point

  34.    of dropping on the floor of that cultured classroom. So he very neatly licked it off, feeling at the same

  35.    time for his handkerchief. “Oh, don’t!” said Miss Walshingham as he did so, and the girl with the

  36.    freckles made a movement in horror. The giggle got the better of the boy with the gift, and celebrated

  37.    its triumph by unseen noises; in spite of which it seemed to Kipps at the moment that the act that

  38.    had made Miss Walshingham say, “Oh, don’t!” was rather a desperate and manly treatment of what

  39.    was after all a creditable injury.

  40.    “It ought to be tied up,” said the lodging-house keeper, holding her chisel upright in her hand.

  41.    “It’s a bad cut to bleed like that.”

  42.    we must tie it up said the freckled girl and hesitated in front of kipps have you got a handkerchief

  43.    she said

  44.    “I dono ‘ow I managed not to bring one,” said Kipps. “I – Not ‘aving a cold I suppose some’ow

  45.    I didn’t think!”

  46.    He checked a further flow of blood.

  47.    The girl with the freckles caught Miss Walshingham’s eye, and held it for a moment. Both glanced

  48.    at Kipps’ injury. The boy with the gift, who had reappeared with a chastened expression from some

  49.    noisy pursuit beneath his desk, made the neglected motions of one who offers shyly. Miss Walshingham,

  50.    under a spell of the freckled girl’s eye, produced a handkerchief. The voice of the maiden lady could

  51.    be heard in the background: “I’ve been through all the technical education ambulance classes twice,

  52.    and I know you go so if it’s a vein, and so if it’s an artery – at least you go so for one and so for the

  53.    other, whichever it may be – but…”

  54.    “If you will give me your hand,” said the freckled girl, and proceeded with Miss Walshingham’s

  55.    assistance to bandage Kipps in a most businesslike way. Yes, they actually bandaged Kipps. They

  56.    pulled up his cuffs – happily they were not a very frayed pair – and held his wrist and wrapped the

  57.    soft handkerchief round it, and tightened the knot together. And Miss Walshingham’s face, the face of

  58.    that most divine human, came close to the face of Kipps.

  59.    “We’re not hurting you, are we?” she said.

  60.    “Not a bit,” said Kipps, as he would have said if they had been sawing his arm off.