Please answer this questions quickly

Dear student,

Please find below the solutions to the asked query:

1. Nicola did not want to trouble the other person because he was a self reliant boy and did not like taking favours. He did not want to reveal his secret to the narrator and thus, he refused for a lift.
2. The narrator is being referred to as 'Sir'. The cause of the trouble is a lift, which Jacopo has readily agreed to take from the narrator.
3. The word vexation means annoyed.
4. The nurse told the story of the two boys to the narrator. Their father was a singer, who had been killed in the early part of the war.  Shortly afterwards, their home was bombed and they became homeless. They had known a comfortable and cultured life but now they had to live in a shelter made by themselves. They suffered from starvation and exposure to cold. Their sister became sick by the time the war was over and now both of them were working hard to earn money for her treatment.