1. Where was Bertie born?

Ans: Bertie was born in South Africa, in a remote farmhouse near a place called Timbavati.

2. Why did Bertie’s mother and father decide to put a fence around the farmhouse after Bertie started
to walk?

Ans: To make a compound where Bertie could play in safety.

3. Now that the compound is built, what danger is and is not Bertie safe from?

Ans: Bertie was not safe from the snakes but as least he was safe from the leopards, and the lions and
the spotted hyenas.

4. What were enclosed within the compound?

Ans: The lawn and gardens at the front of the house, and the stables and barns at the back.

5. How long did the farm stretch?

Ans: The farm stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions, twenty thousand acres of veld.

6. What did Bertie’s father farm?

Ans: Cattle.

7. Why was it hard for Bertie’s father to farm cattle?

Ans: Because the rains had failed too often, and many of the rivers and waterholes had all dried up. This
means that there was no water source for the cattle to drink from and they would eventually die of
thirst. To add to the idea, the wildebeest and impala would prey on, the lions and leopards would sneak
up on the cattle whenever they could.

8. Why was Bertie’s mother often sick?

Ans: His mother was often sick with malaria.

9. What would Bertie’s mother do on her good days?

Ans: She would play the piano for Bertie and play hide-and-seek around the compound. Or she’d just
talk and talk, all about her home in England, about how much she hated the wildness and loneliness of
Africa, and about how Bertie was everything to her.

10. What would Bertie try to do to make his mother happy?

Ans: Every morning he would climb into her bed and snuggle up to her, hoping against hope that she’d
be well and happy.

11. What does the phrase ‘hoping against hope’ mean?

Ans: Clinging to a mere possibility.

12. What was downhill from the farmhouse?

Ans: A waterhole.
13. What became Bertie’s whole world and why?

Ans: The waterhole when there was water in it became Bertie’s whole world. He would spend hours in
the dusty compound, his hands gripping the fence, looking out at the wonders of the veld, at the giraffes
drinking spread-legged at the waterhole.

14. How would Bertie spend his time at night?

Ans: At night he loved reading his books and losing himself in the stories and by day his heart was out in
the veld with the animals.

15. What would Bertie beg his mother when she was well enough?

Ans: He would beg her to take him outside the compound, but her answer was always the same. No.

16. What stories did Bertie’s father tell him?

Ans: Stories of the family of cheetahs witting like sentinels on their kopje, of the leopard they had
spotted high in the tree larder watching over his kill, of the hyenas they had driven off, of the herd of
elephants which had stampeded the cattle.

17. What held him back about leaving the confines of the compound?

Ans: Perhaps it was one of the tales he’d been told of black mamba snakes whole bite would kill you
within ten minutes, of hyenas whose jaws would crunch you to bits, of vultures who would finish off
anything that was left so that no one would ever find even the bits.

18. What did Bertie’s father tell him when Bertie told him that he saw a white lion cub?

Ans: His father told that he must be seeing things or he was telling fibs.

19. Why did Bertie’s father kill the lion cub’s mother?

Ans: Because the lioness ate half a dozen of Bertie’s father’s best cattle in the last two weeks.

20. What did Bertie want to do as soon as he saw the white lion cub for the first time?

Ans:

21. What was surrounding the white lion cub?

Ans: Three hyenas.

22. How did the lion cub try to save himself from the hyenas?

Ans: By waving a pathetic paw.

23. Who saved the lion cub and how?

Ans: Bertie’s mother, by shooting her rifle.

24. After how many baths did Bertie’s mother believe that it was actually a white lion?

Ans: Five baths.

25. What did they do with the white lion cub after they brought him home?

Ans: They gave him five baths, sat him down by the stove in a washing basket and fed him again, all the
milk he could drink and he drank. They he lay down and slept.

26. Why did Bertie’s father not want to keep the lion?

Ans: Because he did not want to keep a grown lion.

27. Why did Bertie’s mother want to keep the lion?

Ans: Because she didn’t want to throw the lion cub to the hyenas. Bertie would have someone to play
with and Bertie was also not going to have any brothers and sisters.

28. What did the lion cub eat in Africa?

Ans: Milk and impala meat.

29. What story did Bertie read to the lion cub?

Ans: Peter and the Wolf.

30. What promise did Bertie make to the lion cub?

Ans: That he would never let him go off to a zoo and make him live behind bars like the wolf in the story.

31. List the changes which happened to Bertie’s mother when they allowed the lion to stay with them.

Ans: She was hardly ever ill, there was a spring to her step, and her laughter pealed around the house.

32. After how many years did Bertie and Millie become good companions?

Ans: Two years.

33. Where did Nolips go in the holidays?

Ans: She went to stay with her sister by the sea in Margate.

34. Where did Nanny Mason take Millie and what did Nanny Mason call it?

Ans: She took Millie on endless nature walks and she called them “walks on the wild side.”

35. Write some animals name which Millie would like to see on her nature walks.

Ans: Zebras, water buffaloes, elephants, baboons, giraffes, wildebeests, spotted hyenas, black mamba
snakes, vultures, lions.

36. What did Nanny Mason tell when Millie said that there are white lions in Africa?

Ans: She said that Millie reads too many fairy tales.

37. Why didn’t Bertie and Millie dare to write letters to each other?

Ans: Bertie and Millie didn’t dare to write letters to each other in case someone found them and read
them.
38. When school term came again, where would Bertie meet Millie?

Ans: He would meet her under the wych elm on the first Sunday at three o’clock without fail.

39. After Millie and Bertie had their last school term, where did they both go?

Ans: Millie was sent off to a convent school by the sea in Sussex, and Bertie was to go away to a college
under the shadow of Canterbury Cathedral.

40. What did Bertie give Millie when he left on Sunday?

Ans: He gave Millie a kite that he had made in carpentry lessons at school and told her to think of him
every time she flew it.

41. Why was Millie careful of flying Bertie’s kite?

Ans: Just in case she lost it up a tree and couldn’t get it back again.

42. What did Millie think would happen if she lost the kite?

Ans: She would lose Bertie.

43. Where did Millie keep the kite that Bertie had made for her?

Ans: She kept it on top of her cupboard in her bedroom.

44. Why did Millie and Bertie write letters after they were away from home?

Ans: Because they were away from home and it was safe to do so. They wrote letters that talked to each
other just as they had done all those years on Wood Hill.

45. Describe how Millie wrote her letters.

Ans: Her letters were long and rambling, about tittle-tattle at school.

46. Describe how Bertie wrote his letters.

Ans: His letters were always short and his handwriting was so tiny you could hardly read it.

47. What did Millie’s father wear when he said goodbye to Nanny Mason and Millie?

Ans: He looked so grand in his khaki uniform and shiny brown boots.

48. Why didn’t Millie grieve for her father?

Ans: Because it is difficult to grieve for someone you never really know, and her father has always been
a stranger to her.

49. When would the war end?

Ans: By Christmas.

50. Why was the narrator too happy to let the dog out and shut the door on him?

Ans: Because the dog always starred at the narrator which made the narrator feel uncomfortable.
51. How does the narrator describe the kite which Bertie had given to Millie?

Ans: It was huge, much bigger than he had expected, and covered in dust. It was made of brown canvas
stretched over a wooden frame and the kite was plain to the narrator since he had seen all the kites
more colorful, and more flamboyant.

52. What does Millie mean by, “Everything comes to he who waits”?

Ans: Of course the narrator was curious and eager to know more and more about Bertie and the white
lion’s story, so Millie gave him a lesson -indirectly- that patience will give you everything.

53. What was the lion doing when the narrator looked out the window?

Ans: The lion on the hillside was blue no more. It was white now, and the dog was bounding across the
hillside, chasing away a cloud of blue butterflies that rose all around him.

54. What is the meaning of cliffhanger?

Ans: An episode that ends in suspense.

55. Why does the write use star marks?

Ans: The writer took the story from present to past, he basically used a cliffhanger to tell about another
part of the story.

56. What does Bertie compare with fighting in the trenches?

Ans: Nightmare.

57. What was Bertie doing at the age of seventeen?

Ans: At seventeen, he’d found himself marching with his regiment along the straight roads of northern
France up to the front line, heads and hearts high with hope and expectation

58. How did Bertie protect himself?

Ans: He was sitting huddled at the bottom of a muddy trench, hands over his head, head between his
knees, curling himself as tight as he would go.

59. When would the Germans often attack?

Ans: At dawn.

60. Who are stretcher-bearers?

Ans: A person who carries one end of the stretcher.

61. Why was Bertie awarded Victoria Cross?

Ans: For his bravery under the fire. He was the hero of the hour, the pride of his regiment.

62. Why does Bertie think what he did was not brave?

Ans: Because he said that to be brave, you have to overcome fear and you have to be frightened in the
first place which he hadn’t been because there wasn’t time for him to be frightened.
63. How does Millie feel when she doesn’t hear from Bertie?

Ans: Every time the postman came and she hoped, the pang of disappointment was sharper each time
when there was no letter from him.

64. Who dried Millie’s tears?

Ans: Nanny Mason.

65. Why did Millie become hopeless to find Bertie?

Ans: Because among so many men in uniform it would be hopeless to go looking for him. Millie did not
even know his regiment nor his rank.

66. How far was the hospital that Millie was sent to?

Ans: It was fifty miles behind the lines, not too far from Amiens.

67. Describe the hospital that Millie was sent to?

Ans: The hospital was a converted chateau with turrets and great wide staircases, and chandeliers in the
wards.

68. Why did many soldiers die in that hospital?

Ans: Because it was so cold in winter that many of the men died as much from the cold as from their
wounds. And there were short of medicines and doctors. There were always so many men coming in,
and there wounds were terrible, so terrible.

69. From where did Millie find out about Bertie?

Ans: in June of 1918, in a magazine called Illustrated London News.

70. How did Millie describe Bertie when she saw him after so many years?

Ans: He was older, thinner in the face and unsmiling. His eyes were deepest and gentle.

71. What is Bertie’s full name?

Ans: Albert Andrews.

72. How far was the hospital in which Bertie was?

Ans: A little more than ten miles away.

73. What was Bertie doing when Millie saw him?

Ans: He was sleeping, propped up on his pillows, one hand behind his head.

74. Why did Millie grit her teeth after she saw the white lion cub?

Ans: Because she was a bit scared of the lion since he looked really hungry and Millie hoped that he
wouldn’t eat her.

75. Why did Monsieur Merlot had to shoot his elephants?

Ans: Because there was no food to feed them and he could not let them starve.

76. Describe the lion after Bertie saw him after so many years.

Ans: He was just skins and bones like Monsieur Merlot and you could see his ribs, and his hip bones too.

77. What did the lion eat?

Ans: The lion ate a huge bone.

78. Why was the butcher pleased to sell the bone to the lion?

Ans: Because a butcher sells meat and throws away the bone but as Millie and Bertie bought the bone, it
means that the butcher will get extra money.

79. What did Monsieur Merlot eat?

Ans: Monsieur Merlot ate a plate of fried potatoes in complete silence and washed it down with a bottle
of red wine.

80. Who were watching the white lion?

Ans: An astonished crowd of villagers, of French soldiers and of British soldiers.

81. What is the meaning of, “so much in my stride”?

Ans: It means that deal with something difficult in a calm way.

82. What was Millie’s reaction when she saw the white lion cub?

Ans: She wasn’t entirely surprised because she expected it. She was a bit frightened. She dealt with it in
a calm way.

83. What was Bertie’s plan?

Ans: To take the lion to England.

84. What does Bertie demand to the colonel?

Ans: A bed in the hospital, rest and a lot of good food for Monsieur Merlot and the shed in the walled
garden behind the hospital where the lion could sleep.

85. How did Bertie convince the colonel to take the lion back to England?

Ans: A lion, the symbol of Britain, not good for morale.