Read and download CBSE Class 9 English Fiction Keeping it from Harold chapter in NCERT book for Class 9 English. You can download latest NCERT eBooks for 2022 chapter wise in PDF format free from Studiestoday.com. This English textbook for Class 9 is designed by NCERT and is very useful for students. Please also refer to the NCERT solutions for Class 9 English to understand the answers of the exercise questions given at the end of this chapter
Keeping It From Harold Class 9 English NCERT
Class 9 English students should refer to the following NCERT Book chapter Keeping It From Harold in standard 9. This NCERT Book for Grade 9 English will be very useful for exams and help you to score good marks
Keeping It From Harold NCERT Class 9
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