The boy is stirring the pot slowly.
Answer: an objective opinion is based on facts, and unbiased.Not influenced by personal feelings or prejudice.
In paragraph 9, what the phrase "drew him on by artful questions" means is that he questioned him to try to gain privileged information.
He had to find out some information that was very important to him, so he started questioning him furtively so as to get to the bottom of things.
I can help, but I will not write the whole thing for you. What is the topic on?