When the two boys were going to high school, Ernest often came over in the evening to study with Claude, and while they worked at the
long kitchen table Mrs. Wheeler brought her darning and sat near them, helping them with their Latin and
algebra. Even old Mahalley was
enlightened by their words of wisdom.
Mrs. Wheeler sald she would never forget the night Ernest arrived from the Old Country. His brother, Joe Havel, had gone to Frankfort to
meet him, and was to stop on the way home and leave some groceries for the Wheelers. The train from the east was late; It was ten o'clock that
night when Mrs. Wheeler, walting in the kitchen, heard Havel's wagon rumble across the little bridge over Lovely Creek. She opened the outside
door, and presently Joe came in with a bucket of salt fish in one hand and a sack of flour on his shoulder. While he took the fish down to the cellar
for her, another figure appeared in the doorway, a young boy, short, stooped, with a flat cap on his head and a great oilcloth valise, such as
pedlars carry, strapped to his back. He had fallen asleep in the wagon, and on waking and finding his brother gone, he had supposed they were at
home and scrambled for his pack. He stood in the doorway, blinking his eyes at the light, looking astonished but eager to do whatever was
required of him. What If one of her own boys, Mrs. Wheeler thought... She went up to him and put her arm around him, laughing a little and
saying in her quiet volce, just as if he could understand her, "Why, you're only a little boy after all, aren't you?"
Ernest said afterwards that it was his first welcome to this country, though he had travelled so far, and had been pushed and hauled and
shouted at for so many days, he had lost count of them. That night he and Claude only shook hands and looked at each other suspiciously, but
ever since they had been good friends.
Which best describes Mrs. Wheeler's relationship with Ernest?
1.
She intends to keep him busy, like an employer.
2. She feels tender and protective toward him, like a mother,
3.She hopes that she can be a good companion to him, like a sister.
4. She believes it is her responsibinty to educate him, like a teacher.