Question

The little boys said to the stranger, "we will not play with you"

Answer 1

Direct : The little boys said to the stranger, "we will not play with you"

Indirect : The little boys told the stranger that they would not play with him.

Additional Information :

• In direct speech, we use the actual words of the speaker which are enclosed within the inverted commas placed at the beginning and at the end.

✴ Indirect speech is a report on what someone else said or wrote without using that person's exact words.

• There is a change in the tense of the statement
• Here , the sentence is in present continuous tense and thus is changed into past continuous tense.
• Pronouns too change
• Some words alter as : today -- that day ; tomorrow -- the next day … etc