A White Heron
by Sarah Orne Jewett (excerpt)
In the excerpt from this short story, a hunter comes to the
house of Sylvia and her grandmother. He is searching for
a white heron. Sylvia knows where the white heron lives,
but she is not sure she wants the hunter to find the bird.
She is soon faced with a dilemma.
(1) "So Sylvy knows all about birds, does she?" he
exclaimed, as he looked round at the little girl who sat,
very demure but increasingly sleepy, in the moonlight. "I
am making a collection of birds myself. I have been at it
ever since I was a boy." (Mrs. Tilley smiled.) There are two
or three very rare ones I have been hunting for these five
years.
(2) "Do you cage 'em up?" asked Mrs. Tilley doubtfully, in
response to this enthusiastic announcement.
(3) "Oh no, they're stuffed and preserved, dozens and
dozens of them," said the ornithologist, "and I have shot or
snared every one myself. I caught a glimpse of a white
heron a few miles from here on Saturday, and I have
followed it in this direction. They have never been found in
this district at all. The little white heron, it is," and he turned
again to look at Sylvia with the hope of discovering that the
rare bird was one of her acquaintances.
4) But Sylvia was watching a hop-toad in the narrow
ootpath.
Select the correct text in the passage.
Which detail best develops Sylvia's internal conflict?
(8) The next day the young sportsman hovered about the woods, and Sylvia kept him company, having lost her first fear of the friendly lad, who
proved to be most kind and sympathetic. He told her many things about the birds and what they knew and where they lived and what they did with
themselves....Sylvia would have liked him vastly better without his gunc she could not understand why he killed the very birds he seemed to like
so much...
Reset