NCERT Solutions for Class 9 English Beehive Chapter 7

There are mainly four characters in the narrative. They are Jerome (the narrator), George, Harris and Montmorency (the dog).

The narrator volunteered to do the packing because as he thought that he was the best packer. He was very proud of his packing and wanted to show it to everyone.

George and Harris will-fully accepted Jerome’s suggestion. George smoked a pipe and “spread himself over the easy-chair”, while Harris put his legs on the table and lit a cigar. No, Jerome wasn’t very happy and felt irritated by their reaction.

The real intention of Jerome, when he offered to pack, was to show his capability through the supervision skills.

After the bag was shut and strapped, Harris noticed that Jerome had not packed the boots. He waited till then to ask about the boots because he wanted Jerome to realise his mistake and ridicule his packing skills for which he was very proud.

The “horrible idea” that occurred to Jerome a little later was that whether or not he had packed his toothbrush. Whenever he travelled he always forgot if he had packed his toothbrush or not. This very thought haunted him to the core and made his life a mess.

While turning things upside down out of the bag and putting the things back one by one Jerome finally found the tooth brush inside a boot.

Jerome had to re-open the packed bag twice because of his habit of forgetting things. Once he had to reopen the bag as he had forgotten to pack the boots. The next time, he unpacked when he realised he had packed his tobacco-pouch in.

George and Harris offered to pack the hampers because Jerome was talking too much time and it was also getting late. They also wanted to show their packing skill to Jerome.

Jerome says that Montmorency’s ambition in life was to get in the way and he sworn at it. Montmorency was a mischievous little dog who loved troubling others. I think that Montmorency was a perfect trouble maker who wanted to get involved and play whenever he found people busy with their work or whenever he might felt bored. He meant no trouble intentionally. But when people reacted badly, shouted at him or threw things at his head, he got discouraged and would go away to sit silently in a corner, which the narrator calls as the fulfilment of his conceit.

Of all the three, Jerome is the best packer. He knew how to arrange things in correct order. Both Harris and George usually messed things up. George stepped on the butter. Harris packed the strawberry jam on top of a tomato and squashed it. They were constantly getting annoyed by Montmorency. Jerome would take his time to pack things but he was good at it. Harris and George would sometimes even kept things behind them and then keep searching for it. They made everything such a chaos.

The packing adventure was already a messy job and Montmorency’s contribution made it even more troublesome and tiresome. He did his level best to be a “perfect nuisance”. He came and sat down on the things, just when things were about to be packed. He used to put his leg into the jam and worried the teaspoons. He also pretended that the lemons were rats. So he got into the hamper and killed three of them before Harris could land him with the frying-pan.