Hi Everyone!! This article will share New Year’s Day Questions & Answers.
In my previous posts, I have shared the questions and answers of A Wild Little Thing, The Vet Makes An Impression and The Flamingo That Flew To The Snow so, you can check these posts as well.
New Year’s Day Questions & Answers
Question 1: Why did Mr Moss ask William to look after the shop?
Answer: Mr Moss had to catch a train, but his nephew Bill, who was supposed to come and look after the shop while he was away, had not arrived yet. Mr Moss was getting late, so he asked William to look after the shop.
Question 2: What were the resolutions of Mr Moos and William? Did they keep their resolutions?
Answer: Moss had resolved to ask the girl he loved to marry him. William had resolved to be polite with everyone. Yes, both of them kept their resolutions.
Question 3: Why does William look at his resolution as a god to be appeased?
Answer: William looks at his resolution as a god to be appeased because he feels that it is this resolution that awarded him the dream of a shop filled with sweets, which was his dream in reality.
Question 4: Why did William pinch himself when he was asked to weigh a quarter of the pink sweets for himself and to mind the sweet shop for a few minutes?
Answer: He pinched himself to see if this was a dream or was it reality. For William, it was too good to be true.
Question 5: Read the lines and answer the questions:
“Will you do something for me? I’ll give you a quarter of those sweets.”
(a) Who said this to whom?
Answer: Mr Moss said this to William.
(b) What did the speaker want the listener to do?
Answer: The speaker, Mr Moss, wanted William to stay in the shop till his nephew Bill arrived. If anyone came into the shop before he arrived, William was to tell them to wait or come back later.
(c) Did the listener accept the offer? Was he happy to do so?
Answer: Yes, William accepted offer. He was too happy to do so, as this not only guaranteed him a quarter of sweets, but also left him in charge of the whole sweet-shop, all by himself. For him, it was a dream come true.
Question 6: Why do you think William walked around with a conscious swagger?
Answer: It was one of his childhood dreams that he should be the owner of a sweet shop so that he could eat all the sweets he wants. He walks with a swagger, giving himself an air of confidence and self-importance as though he was the real owner of the shop.
New Year’s Day Questions & Answers
Question 7: Read the lines and answer the questions:
At this point a small boy appeared in the doorway.
(a) Why had the small boy come to the shop?
Answer: The small boy had come to the shop to look for Mr Moss and tell him that Mr Moss’s nephew, Bill wouldn’t be able to come to the shop as he was ill.
(b) What did William tell him?
Answer: William told the boy that it was all right and told him to go away.
(c) Why did the small boy leave?
Answer: The small boy hesitated when William told him to go away, but when William gave him a stick of liquorice and a packet of chocolate to make him go away, he left with the sweets.
Question 8: How did Ginger and Henry react to an offer to help themselves with sweets from the shop?
Answer: Ginger and Henry lost no time in stuffing their mouths and pockets with sweets, feeling that this offer was too good to last for a long period of time, as an adult might appear at any moment and foil this opportunity.
Question 9: Read the lines and answer the questions:
“If I’d not taken one to be polite,” said William, “I’d knock you down.”
(a) Whom was William speaking to?
Answer: William was speaking to a boy of fourteen who was passing the shop and stopped at the doorway when he saw the three young boys inside.
(b) What was he referring to in the first part of the sentence?
Answer: William was referring to his resolution of being polite with everyone.
(c) Why did he want to knock the listener down? What did he actually do?
Answer: He wanted to knock the listener down because when he told the boy to get out, the boy did not leave; instead, he said that he knew William and his friends were stealing the sweets from someone else’s shop, and demanded to have some sweets himself. William did not actually knock the boy down, but he began throwing Sour Drops at him.
Question 10: ‘Aladdin’s Cave was nothing to this.’ What does this expression mean?
Answer: To children, a sweet shop is a treasure trove. The narrator says that the sweet shop is even more precious than all the treasures found in Aladdin’s cave.
Question 11: Read the lines and answer the questions.
“They’ve gone up since,” said William brazenly, adding, “if you’ll kindly excuse me saying so.”
(a) What was William talking about?
Answer: William was talking about the bar of chocolate that the thin lady wanted to buy from the shop.
(b) How does William try to make up for the loss he incurred at the shop?
Answer: William over-priced the bar of chocolate, hoping to make up for the loss that Mr Moss would incur because he consumed a large quantity of the sweets from his sweet shop.
(c) Why does William add, “if you’ll kindly excuse me saying so”?
Answer: William added these words in an attempt to stay true to his resolution to be polite to others.
New Year’s Day Questions & Answers
Question 12: Read the lines and answer the questions:
…said William, returning to the more important matter.
(a) ‘What was ‘the more important matter’ for William?
Answer: For William, the more important matter was the shop and what state it was in, because he had been left in charge of it.
(b) What was ‘the more important matter’ for the listener?
Answer: For the listener, Mr Moss, the more important matter was the fact that the girl he had asked to marry him had accepted.
(c) What happened because the listener was not giving importance to William’s words?
Answer: Because Mr Moss was not giving importance to William’s words or paying enough attention to the shop, he did not mind, or even properly notice, the state of the shop – what a great disorder it was in, how much of the sweets and chocolates had been eaten and taken away, and therefore how much loss he would suffer. Therefore, he did not scold or question William at all; in fact, he thanked him for staying.
Question 13: How did Mr Moss react on seeing the state of the shop?
Answer: Mr Moss was surprised and confused to see the state of the shop, since it was in great disorder and much emptier than when he had left it, but he was not angry or sad because he was not thinking about the shop. The girl he had proposed to, had accepted his offer of marriage, and Mr Moss was so happy that he could think of nothing else. Even when William pointed out the mess, Mr Moss dismissed him, saying that it did not matter.
Question 14: What was William’s reaction to the boy of fourteen? Was he losing focus of his resolution?
Answer: William clearly did not like the looks of the fourteen year old boy and was rude to him when he enquired what the boys were doing in the shop. William was also beginning to feel sick because he had consumed too many sweets and was irritated. He told the boy that had it not been for his resolution to be polite, he would have knocked him down. When he found that the boy was unperturbed, he lost his cool and began to fling the contents of sweets from the jar nearest to him, thus beginning a fight. At this point in time he totally loses focus on his resolution and is brought down to reality only with the appearance of Mr Moss.
Question 15: William prided himself by imagining that he was the owner of the sweet shop? How did this view change through the course of the series of events?
Answer: Initially, William revelled at the fact that he was in charge of the sweet shop and his childhood dream had come to pass. In fact, he was so happy that he pretended to be the shop owner for a while. With this thought in mind, he felt that he could rightfully eat as many sweets as he wanted to. He stuffed his mouth to all the sweets he wanted, and when he had had enough, he invited two of his friends who were passing by, to enjoy the sweets. Gradually, we see him losing interest in the sweets, but he was proud to tell his friends that he was the owner of the shop which was passed on to him due to his politeness. Though he had his fill of the sweets, he did not want a strange fourteen year old boy to bully him into getting sweets. He becomes defensive about the sweets and begins a fight. Towards the end, he feels sick due to the consumption of too many sweets and is ready to rush back home the moment Mr Moss returns.
So, these were New Year’s Day Questions & Answers.