Read the extract from a novel and choose the right answer to complete each statement
When I was quite small, I would sometimes dream of acity. This was strange because it began before I even knewwhat a city was, but this city, clustered on a curve of a bigblue bay, would come into my mind. I could see the streets,and the buildings that lined them, the waterfront, even boatsin the harbour; yet, on waking, I had never seen the sea, ora boat ... and the buildings were quite unlike any I knew. Thetraffic in the streets was strange, carts running with no horsesto pull them; and sometimes there were things in the sky,shiny fish-shaped things that were certainly not birds.
Most often, I would see this wonderful place by daylight,but occasionally it was by night when the lights lay likestrings of glow-worms along the shore, and a few of themseemed to be sparks drifting on the water, or in the air. It wasa beautiful, fascinating place, and once, when I was stillyoung enough to know no better, I asked my eldest sister,Mary, where this lovely city could be.
She shook her head, and told me that there was no suchplace — not now. But perhaps, she suggested, I couldsomehow be dreaming about times long ago. Dreams werefunny things, and there was no accounting for them; so itmight be that what I was seeing was a bit of the world as ithad been once upon a time — the wonderful world that theOld People had lived in; as it had been before the trouble.
But after that she went on to warn me very seriously notto mention it to anyone else; other people, as far as sheknew, did not have such pictures in their heads, eithersleeping or waking, so it would be unwise to mentionthem.That was good advice, and luckily I had the sense totake it. People in our district had a very sharp eye for the odd,or the unusual, so that even my left-handedness causedslight disapproval. So, at that time, and for some yearsafterwards, I did not mention it to anyone — indeed, I almostforgot about it, for as I grew older the dream came lessfrequently, and then very rarely.
But the advice stuck. Without it I might have mentionedthe curious understanding I had with my cousin Rosalind,and that would certainly have led us both into very gravetrouble — if anyone had happened to believe me. Neither Inor she, I think, paid much attention to it at that time: wesimply had the habit of caution. I certainly did not feelunusual. I was a normal little boy, growing up in a normalway, taking the ways of the world about me for granted. AndI kept on like that until the day I met Sophie. Even then, thedifference was not immediate. It is hindsight that enables meto fix that as the day when my first small doubts started togerminate.
That day I had gone off by myself, as I often did. I was, Isuppose, nearly 10 years old. My next sister, Sarah, was fiveyears older, and the gap meant that I played a great dealalone. I had made my way down the cart track to the south,along the borders of several fields until I came to the highbank, and then along the top of the bank for quite a way.
The bank was no puzzle to me then: it was far too big forme to think of as a thing that men could have built, nor hadit ever occurred to me to connect it with the wondrousdoings of the Old People whom I sometimes heard about. Itwas simply the bank, coming around in a wide curve, andthen running straight as an arrow towards the distant hills;just a part of the world, and no more to be wondered at thanthe river, the sky, or the hills themselves.
When he was young, the writer dreamt about
- an unusual place every night.
- a city with unusual animals.
- a place he had no knowledge of.
- a busy seaside resort.
The city lights at night
- were arranged in lines.
- floated in the sea.
- impressed the writer.
- appeared in the sky.
The writer uses the phrase 'no accounting for them' (paragraph 3) to show that
- he regretted telling his sister about his dreams.
- he could find no explanation for his dreams.
- he believed that his dreams were true.
- he found his dreams to be very amusing.
The writer approved of his sister's advice because
- it made him forget about his dream immediately.
- where he lived the people liked to be out of the ordinary.
- the locals were suspicious of people who were different.
- it stopped him from having his dream all the time.
The writer first began to question his views when
- he confided in his cousin Rosalind.
- he and Rosalind did something wrong.
- a girl called Sophie entered his life.
- he realised people thought he was lying.
The writer went to the bank on his own because
- he enjoyed his own company.
- he was old enough to go out alone.
- he didn't want anyone to go with him.
- he had no one else to play with.
The impression that the writer had of the bank as a child was that
- it was a very mysterious place.
- there was nothing remarkable about it.
- it could only have been man-made.
- it had to be linked to the Old People.