Read the following poem given below and answer the question.
A GIRL'S GARDEN
A NEIGHBOUR of mine in the village
likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
A childlike thing.
One day she asked her father
To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
And he said, "Why not?"
In casting about for a corner
He thought of an idle bit
Or walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
And he said, "Just it."
And he said, "That ought to make you
An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
On your slim-jim arm".
It was not enough of a garden,
Her father said, to plough;
So she had to work it all by hand,
But she don't mind now.
She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow
Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away and left
Her not-nice load,
And hid from anyone passing.
And then she begged the seed.
She says she thinks she planted one
Of all things but weed.
A hill each of potatoes,
Radishes, lettuce, peas,
Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn.
And even fruit trees.
And yes, she was long mistrusted
That a cider apple tree
In bearing there today is hers,
Or at least may be.
Her crop was a miscellany
When all was said and done,
A little bit of everything,
A great deal of none.
According to Robert Frost, the girl runs away, when she brings dung because : -
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → it is not a nice load
The poem says: "But she always ran away and left / Her not-nice load, / And hid from anyone passing." The dung was smelly and unpleasant, and she was embarrassed to be seen with it, so she ran off and hid.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: it is too light — Incorrect. Not mentioned: the poem says nothing about the weight of the load. She ran away because of what the load was.
Option 2: her father calls her — Incorrect. Contradicted: the father does not call her. She hides from passers-by.
Option 4: she wants to play — Incorrect. Wrong reason: she does not run off to play but to hide from anyone passing.
Note: In the original NTA paper, Option 1 read "it is heavy" and Option 2 read "it is difficult to push". NTA accepted these options as correct answers as well. To leave only one correct answer and avoid confusion for students, they have been changed here to "it is too light" and "her father calls her" respectively.
Advice for the exam: In the real exam, mark the answer that is grammatically or factually correct. If NTA’s provisional answer key marks a different option, challenge it during the answer-key challenge window and give the reason in one or two lines.