Just So Stories for Little Children / Просто сказки. Книга для чтения на английском языке. Редьярд КиплингЧитать онлайн книгу.

      And the Rhinoceros did. He buttoned it up with the three buttons, and it tickled like cake-crumbs in bed. Then he wanted to scratch, but that made it worse; and then he lay down on the sands and rolled and rolled and rolled, and every time he rolled the cake-crumbs tickled him worse and worse and worse. Then he ran to the palm-tree and rubbed and rubbed and rubbed himself against it[58]. He rubbed so much and so hard that he rubbed his skin into a great fold over his shoulders, and another fold underneath, where the buttons used to be[59] (but he rubbed the buttons off), and he rubbed some more folds over his legs. And it spoiled his temper[60], but it didn’t make the least difference to the cake-crumbs. They were inside his skin and they tickled. So he went home, very angry indeed and horribly scratchy; and from that day to this every rhinoceros has great folds in his skin and a very bad temper, all on account of the cake-crumbs inside.

      But the Parsee came down from his palm-tree, wearing his hat, from which the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental splendour, packed up his cooking-stove, and went away in the direction of Orotavo, Amygdala, the Upland Meadows of Antananarivo, and the Marshes of Sonaput.

      Questions and tasks

      1. Describe how Rhinoceros looked like formerly? How did he manage to do this? 2. What did the Parsee do when he found the Rhinoceros’ skin?

      3. Describe a ‘modern’ Rhinoceros.

      4. How did the Rhinoceros get his skin?

      5. Retell the story.

      How the Leopard Got His Spots

      In the days when everybody started fair, Best Beloved, the Leopard lived in a place called the High Veldt. ’Member[62] it wasn’t the Low Veldt, or the Bush Veldt, or the Sour Veldt, but the ’sclusively[63] bare, hot, shiny High Veldt, where there was sand and sandy-coloured rock and ’sclusively tufts of sandy-yellowish grass. The Giraffe and the Zebra and the Eland and the Koodoo and the Hartebeest[64] lived there; and they were ’sclusively sandy-yellow-brownish all over; but the Leopard, he was the ’sclusivest sandiest-yellowest-brownest of them all – a grayish-yellowish catty-shaped kind of beast, and he matched the ’sclusively yellowish-greyish-brownish colour of the High Veldt to one hair. This was very bad for the Giraffe and the Zebra and the rest of them; for he would lie down by a ’sclusively yellowish-greyish-brownish stone or clump of grass, and when the Giraffe or the Zebra or the Eland or the Koodoo or the Bush-Buck or the Bonte-Buck came by he would surprise them out of their jumpsome lives. He would indeed! And, also, there was an Ethiopian with bows and arrows (a ’sclusively greyish-brownish-yellowish man he was then), who lived on the High Veldt with the Leopard; and the two used to hunt together – the Ethiopian with his bows and arrows, and the Leopard ’sclusively with his teeth and claws – till the Giraffe and the Eland and the Koodoo and the Quagga and all the rest of them didn’t know which way to jump, Best Beloved. They didn’t indeed!

      After a long time – things lived for ever so long in those days – they learned to avoid[65] anything that looked like a Leopard or an Ethiopian; and bit by bit[66] – the Giraffe began it, because his legs were the longest – they went away from the High Veldt. They scuttled for days and days and days till they came to a great forest, ’sclusively full trees and bushes and stripy, speckly, patchy-blatchy shadows, and there they hid: and after another long time, what with standing half in the shade and half out of it, and what with the slippery-slidy shadows of the trees falling on them, the Giraffe grew blotchy, and the Zebra grew stripy, and the Eland and the Koodoo grew darker[67], with little wavy grey lines on their backs like bark on a tree-trunk; and so, though you could hear them and smell them, you could very seldom see them, and then only when you knew precisely where to look. They had a beautiful time in the ’sclusively speckly-spickly shadows of the forest, while the Leopard and the Ethiopian ran about over the ’sclusively grayish-yellowish-reddish High Veldt outside, wondering where all their breakfasts and their dinners and their teas had gone. At last they were so hungry that they ate rats and beetles and rock-rabbits, the Leopard and the Ethiopian, and then they had the Big Tummy-ache[68], both together; and then they met Baviaan – the dog-headed, barking Baboon who is Quite the Wisest Animal in All South Africa.

      Said the Leopard to Baviaan (and it was a very hot day), ‘Where has all the game gone?’

      And Baviaan winked[69]. He knew.

      Said the Ethiopian to Baviaan, ‘Can you tell me the present habitat of the aboriginal[70] Fauna?’ (That meant just the same thing, but the Ethiopian always used long words. He was a grown-up.)

      And Baviaan winked. He knew.

      Then said Baviaan, ‘The game has gone into other spots[71]; and my advice to you, Leopard, is to go into other spots as soon as you can.’

      And the Ethiopian said, ‘That is all very fine, but I wish to know whither the aboriginal Fauna has migrated.’

      Then said Baviaan, ‘The aboriginal Fauna has joined the aboriginal Flora because it was high time for a change[72]; and my advice to you, Ethiopian, is to change as