Direction: A passage is given with 5 questions following it. Read the passage carefully and choose thebestanswer to each question out of the four alternatives.
PASSAGE
My worries were increasing. The boy at the shop was becoming more clamorous. My sales were poor, as the railways were admitting more pedlars on the platforms. My cash receipts were going down and my credit sales alone flourished. The wholesale merchants who supplied me with goods stopped credit to me. The boy’s method of accountkeeping was so chaotic that I did not know whether I was moving forward or backward. He produced cash from the counter in a haphazard manner, and there were immense gaps on the shelves all over the shop. The complaint by the public was that nothing one wanted was ever available. Suddenly the railways gave me notice to quit. I pleaded with the old stationmaster and porter, but they could do nothing; the order had come from high up. The shop was given to a new contractor. I could not contemplate the prospect of being cut off from the railways. I grew desperate and angry. I shed tears at seeing a new man in the place where I and my father had sat. I slapped the boy on the cheek and he cried, and his father, the porter, came down on me and said, ‘this is what he gets for helping you! I’d always told the boy – He was not your paid servant, anyway.’
MEANING OF WORDS/PHRASES
(1) clamorous (Adj.) : noisy
(2) pedlars (N.) : someone who travels about selling his wares (on the streets/at carnivals)
(3) chaotic (Adj.) : in a state of complete confusion and lack of order
(4) contemplate (V.) : think about/of
(5) cut off (Phr. V.) ; to be separate from others