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White Mice

by Ruskin Bond

Granny should never have entrusted my Uncle Ken with the job of taking me to the station and putting me on the train for Delhi. He got me to the station all right, but then proceeded to put me on the wrong train!


I was nine or ten at the time and I’d been spending part of my winter holidays with my grandparents in Dehra. Now it was time to go back to my parents in Delhi before joining school again.


“Just make sure that Ruskin gets into the right compartment, Kenneth,” Gran said to her only son. “And make sure he has a berth to himself and a thermos of drinking water.”


Uncle Ken carried out his instructions to the letter. He even bought me a bar of chocolate, consuming most of it himself while telling me how to pass my exams without too much study. (I’ll tell you the secret someday.) The train pulled out of the station, and we waved fond good-byes to each other.


An hour later, I discovered to my horror that I was not on the train to Delhi but on the night express to Lucknow, over 300 miles in the opposite direction.


“Wait till we get to Lucknow,” advised a kind passenger, “then send a telegram to your parents.”


Early next morning the train steamed into Lucknow. One of the passengers kindly took me to the stationmaster’s office. Mr. P. K. Ghosh, Stationmaster said the sign over his door. When my predicament had been explained to him, Mr. Ghosh looked down at me through his bifocals and said, “Yes, yes, we must send a telegram to your parents.”


“I don’t have their address yet,” I said. “They were to meet me in Delhi. You’d better send a telegram to my grandfather in Dehra.”


“Done, done,” said Mr. Ghosh, who was in the habit of repeating certain words. “And meanwhile, I’ll take you home and introduce you to my family.”


Mr. Ghosh’s house was just behind the station. He brought me a cup of sweet, milky tea and two large rasgullas, syrupy Indian sweetmeats.


“Now let me show you my family” he said.


He took me by the hand and led me to a boarded-up veranda at the back of the house. Here I was amazed to find a miniature railway, complete with station, railway bungalows, and signal boxes. Next to it was a miniature fairground with swings, a roundabout, and a Ferris wheel. Cavorting on the roundabout and Ferris wheel were fifteen to twenty white mice! Another dozen or so mice were running in and out of tunnels and climbing onto a toy train. Mr. Ghosh pressed a button, and the little train, crowded with white mice, left the station and went rattling off to the far corner of the veranda.


“My hobby for many years,” said Mr. Ghosh. “What do you think of it, think of it?”


“I like the train, sir.”


“But not the mice?”


“There are an awful lot of them, sir.”


___


Adapted from White Mice, by Ruskin Bond, ©️️ by Cricket Media, Inc. Reproduced with permission.

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Questions
Which sentence best demonstrates that the narrator is frustrated with his Uncle Kenneth?


“Granny should never have entrusted my Uncle Ken with the job of taking me to the station and putting me on the train for Delhi.”


“‘Just make sure that Ruskin gets into the right compartment, Kenneth,’ Gran said to her only son.”


“He even bought me a bar of chocolate, consuming most of it himself while telling me how to pass my exams without too much study.”


“The train pulled out of the station, and we waved fond good-byes to each other.”

Answer 1

“Granny should never have entrusted my Uncle Ken with the job of taking me to the station and putting me on the train for Delhi.”

This sentence directly blames Uncle Ken and shows the narrator’s frustration with him.