Three Important Question With Answer from "The House Call" and Summary

Questions | English
The House Call
Class : 11 | The Magic of Words

Summary

The house call is laid down on the background of German. There is a major character named Dr. Emil Braun. It was 9:30 in the evening Dr. Braun was sitting alone in the dining room. He was so tired because of his difficult surgical operations of the day. He suddenly woke up hearing the doorbell. There was a girl saying to his wife that her mother was dying. Meanwhile a little girl arrived at the door to call the doctor to visit her apartment .Then the doctor became ready to go with her. It was lightly raining the little girl walked so fast and the doctor followed to her. The doctor wanted to ask some questions about the sickness of her mother but he couldn't catch her. She was ahead keeping a good distance between the doctor and herself. At last she went into an old house. It was absolutely dark inside. She started climbing the stairs and reached the fifth floor. The girl pointed to the doctor that her mother was there and thanked him. The doctor entered the room. He found a woman lying in the bed. She was the maintenance staff of his hospital. When he checked her, he found that she was suffered from pneumonia. He gave some medicine. The doctor talked with her about her little girl. But she told him that she had been already died before three months. The sick mother had kept her shoes and shawl for her memory. Then the doctor looked it more closely and found that they were damp and wet. Elda told him that she was thinking about him. The doctor saw that the woman was asleep. He touched her feverish head once again and returned back closing the door. There are two possible explanations the girl who came to fetch the doctor. One possibility is that it was a girl who lived near to the sick woman. However, the girl said it was her own mother who was sick. This means the girl must have been the ghost of the daughter of the sick woman.

Important Questions

1. Summarize the story "The House Call" 

Ans: See the summary above for complete answer. 

2. Why did the doctor have a look of surprise on his face when Elda told him that little daughter died in September? 

Ans: It was so because Elda's little daughter had gone to Dr. Braun's house to call him for the treatment of her sick mother. Dr. Braun had followed the same girl on the way. So, the doctor had a look of surprise. 

3. What did Dr. Braun discover when he went with the girl who came to house? 

Ans: The doctor reached to Elda's house. He saw that girl at the door. But Elda said that her daughter had died in September. Dr. Braun surprised when he heard this. He finally realized that he might have been called by Elda's dead daughter's sprit. It shows that it was a dead sprit of Elda's daughter who haunted the door of the doctor. 

Questions for Practice 

1. What sickness did the woman have? 

2. What was the doctor doing when the doorbell rang? 

3. What details in the story suggest to the reader that the little girl is in fact a ghost? 

4. What do you think the doctor thought when he found out that the shoes were wet and the shawl damp? 

5. Why do you think the little girl walked ahead of the doctor instead of walking with him?