Question

Frances by W.D. Valgardson

The trunk sat in the middle of the living room on newspapers her mother had spread out to keep the dust off her carpets. They tried to force the lid open but no matter how they pulled or pried, it stayed stubbornly shut. "There must be a way," Mom said. "There's no lock and no place to put a lack so the lock must be in the box itself." They wiped the box, getting every speck of dust and cobwebs off it. Then they studied it from every direction. It wasn't a particularly beautiful box. It was longer than it was wide. It had a slightly rounded top. There were two ribs in the top. The sides were roughly carved with horses.

"Interesting carvings" Gran said. "They show the integrity of the carver. There's no concern for the marketplace "Folk artis in," Mom replied "Hand-crafted. It should be worth quite a lot Frances ran her fingers lightly over the horses. They were wonderful No details, just the outline of horses running freely the safettered spirits. The numbers, 1871, were not, as they'd first thought, part of the lid, but each number was fixed in place with a single brass bolt. The trunk had been painted blue and the numbers red. Now most of the paint had faded away, "Well have another look at it in the morning" Mom finally said. "I need to put myself together." Frances woke up while it was still dark. She looked at her bedside clock Four a.m. She lay in bed and listened to the waves on the beach. That was one of the best things about the cottage. She loved going to sleep to the sound of the

waves and waking up to the sound of the waves As she lay there, she could see the box, just as if it was sitting in front of her at the celing. She turned it around in her head, the except that she was staring t way she could turn pictures of objects around on the computer. There was a mystery to it, and the loved mysteries. When she grew up, she thought she might be a detective or a coroner or an anthropologist-someone who was always trying to find answers

"Why do you want to know the answers to everything?" her mother often chided

her. "I don't know," Frances replied. just do. Questions need to be answered."

Her mother thought it was all nonsense. The only thing she wanted to know was

who wanted to sell a house and who wanted to buy one.

Frances slipped out of bed and crept into the living room to her surprise, her gran was sitting there staring at the box. Frances sat down on the floor beside her. "This was my gran's, Fjola whispered. "I'd forgotten all about it. The last time I saw it must have been when I was your age." "My great great grandmother's, Frances said. She leaned forward and put her arms around the front of the box as if she were hugging it. "She brought it out from Iceland with her. imagine being thirteen and putting all your worldly goods in a box and then getting on a boat and traveling half the world to start a new life." "There was the smalipox, Frances said. She'd heard that story. About everybody dying of smallpox

"That was before," Gran said. "She didn't come out with the first settlers. The smallpox had come and gone and there was a settlement and some farms. There'd been flooding and terrible weather. A lot of the first settlers went to the Dakutas Her father and aunt took over an abandoned farmstead." They sat there in silence, listening to the waves, but Frances wasn't really hearing the water lapping on the shore. She was staring at the box, turning it this way and that in her mind. She leaned forward, put her hand on the first number and twisted. She felt it give a little. She turned it harder and it stiffly moved to an angle. Then she did the same with the other three numbers. This time when they pulled on the lid, it came up easly

Answer these questions

1. What is the main appeal of the box to Frances?

2. What do the interesting carvings" on the trunk indicate

3. Why does Mother believe that the box is worth a lot of money? 4. In her imagination, to what does Frances compare the image of the box?

5. Who originally owned the box?​

Answer 1

Answer:

Length =240m

Breadth =110m

As, length and breadth are given, we are sure that the field is rectangular in shape.

We know,

Area of Rectangle=(Length× Breadth)

Area of field =(240×100)m

2

=26,400m

2

=

10,000

26,400

hectares

=2.64 hectares.