CBSE Class 9 Answered

Once upon a time there was a girl named Rosaline who lived with her mother on a farm outside the city. The farm was also very close to the woods where bears and wolves used to wander about after sunset. Rosaline would work all morning on the farm and then go to the market to sell the farm produce.

They retired indoors before dark, and secured the stables and the cattle sheds from the predators. One evening, after completing her day’s work, as Rosaline was walking to her home after closing the barn and securing the sheds, she heard the milk cans rattling from the barn. It almost startled her, as it was later than her usual time to go indoors and she began to imagine being outnumbered by wolves and bears all at the same time.

Now hers was a farm outside the city and therefore, she did not have the luxury of owning a device that could make phone calls or send messages during emergencies. So she decided to walk back to the barn and check what was going on. As she unlatched the barn door, she saw the horses neighing nervously and the cows mooing frantically as the sounds from behind the milk cans intensified. Rosaline was now sure that a huge bear had sneaked into the barn, because if it were a wolf there would be no clamouring and rattling around. She lit a log to scare the bear away. As she walked in the direction of the rattling, she heard muffled cries. ‘Something is not right’, she thought, ‘why will a bear cry in my barn?’ And so she rushed behind the hay stack where the milk cans were and was shocked and surprised.

A little bear cub, with its paw injured, was lying on the hay, breathing heavily and trembling like a leaf. It was very cold that season. Rosaline threw the axe she was carrying with the log. She went closer to the poor little cub and tried comforting it, gently stroking its forehead. The bear was too tired to think of Rosaline as a threat. As soon as Rosaline spread her hands to pick the cub, it jumped into her arms and cuddled into her coat, as if struggling to find warmth. ‘It’s okay, little one! Are you lost? Your mommie must be so worried for you! If we don’t head back homeward she will come looking for you and that, my dear, does not sound good for us people at all! But we must nurse you back to health first, shouldn’t we?’

And so Rosaline started nursing the cub. She bandaged its wounded paw and fed the little one whenever it was hungry. Soon the cub got used to playing with the farm animals. Poppy the horse and Gamy the cow were its favourite playmates, but Klaus the duck scared him to bits. Rosaline started calling the cub Bobby. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months, and Bobby was not a little cub anymore. He was now a member of the farm family, and Rosaline thought it was the perfect time to free it into the wild. But one day something strange happened.

One evening, just before sunset, as Rosaline was getting ready to go indoors, she saw a huge furry silhouette lingering outside the farm, just where the woods began. It took her only a moment to realise that it was a bear, perhaps the mother of the cub, and she had finally found where her lost cub was. Rosaline froze at the sight of the huge beast and couldn’t move from behind the hay stack. However, what she saw next was nothing short of magic. Bobby was playing with Poppy and suddenly Klaus charged forward flapping its wings, which, threw Bobby into a funny dance around Gamy. Although Rosaline was frightened, she was also amused by the whole incident. Just then, she saw the mother bear looking at Bobby, almost as if she had found her lost cub. She looked at them frolicking around, paused for a second, and then turned back in the direction of the woods.