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

      ‘’Vantage number two!’ said the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake. ‘You couldn’t have done that with a mere-smear nose. Don’t you think the sun is very hot here?’

      ‘It is,’ said the Elephant’s Child, and before he thought what he was doing he schlooped up a schloop of mud from the banks of great grey-green, greasy Limpopo, and slapped it on his head, where it made a cool scoopy-sloshy mud-cap all trickly behind his ears.

      ‘’Vantage number three!’ said the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake. ‘You couldn’t have done that with a mere-smear nose. Now how do you feel about being spanked again?’

      ‘’Scuse me,‘ said the Elephant’s Child, ‘but I should not like it at all.’

      ‘How would you like to spank somebody?’ said the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake.

      ‘I should like it very much indeed,‘ said the Elephant’s Child.

      ‘Well,’ said the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake, ‘you will find that new nose of yours very useful to spank people with.’

      ‘Thank you,‘ said the Elephant’s Child, ‘I’ll remember that; and now I think I’ll go home to all my dear families and try.’

      So the Elephant’s Child went home across Africa frisking and whisking his trunk. When he wanted fruit to eat he pulled fruit down from a tree, instead of[121] waiting for it to fall as he used to do. When he wanted grass he plucked grass up from the ground, instead of going on his knees as he used to do[122]. When the flies bit him he broke off the branch of a tree and used it as a fly-whisk; and he made himself a new, cool, slushy-squishy mud-cap whenever the sun was hot. When he felt lonely walking through Africa he sang to himself down his trunk, and the noise was louder that several brass bands. He went specially out of his way to find a broad Hippopotamus (she was no relation of his), and he spanked her very hard, to make sure[123] that the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake had spoken the truth about his new trunk. The rest of the time he picked up the melon-rinds that he had dropped on his way to the Limpopo for he was a Tidy Pachy-derm.

      One dark evening he came back to all his dear families, and he coiled up his trunk and said, ‘How do you do?’ They were very glad to see him, and immediately said, ‘Come here and be spanked for your satiable curtiosity.’

      ‘Pooh,’ said the Elephant’s Child, ‘I don’t think you peoples know anything about spanking; but I do, and I’ll show you.’

      Then he uncurled his trunk and knocked two of his dear brothers head over heels.

      ‘O Bananas!’ said they, ‘where did you learn that trick, and what have you done to your nose?’

      ‘I got a new one from the Crocodile on the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River,’ said the Elephant’s Child. ‘I asked him what he had for dinner, and he gave me this to keep.’

      ‘It looks very ugly,’ said his hairy uncle, the Baboon.

      ‘It does,’ said the Elephant’s Child, ‘But it’s very useful,’ and he picked up his hairy uncle, the Baboon, by one hairy leg, and hove him into a hornets’ nest[124].

      Then that bad Elephant’s Child spanked all his dear families for a long time, till they were very warm and greatly astonished. He pulled out his tall Ostrich aunt’s tail-feathers; and he caught his tall uncle, the Giraffe, by the hind-leg, and dragged him through a thorn-bush; and he shouted at his broad aunt, the Hippopotamus, and blew bubbles into her ear when she was sleeping in the water after meals; but he never let any one touch Kolokolo Bird.

      At last things grew so exciting that his dear families went off one by one in a hurry to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, to borrow[125] new noses from the Crocodile. When they came back nobody spanked anybody anymore; and ever since that day, O Best Beloved, all the Elephants you will ever see, besides all those that you won’t, have trunks precisely like the trunk of the ‘satiable Elephant’s Child.

      Questions and tasks

      1. What questions did the Elephant’s Child ask the animals? Why?

      2. What did the Elephant’s Child want to find out when he set off to the Limpopo River?

      3. What question did the Elephant’s Child ask the Crocodile when he saw him for the first time? What did the Crocodile answer?

      4. What advantages did the Elephant’s Child get thanks to his curtiosity?

      5. Describe how the family met the Elelphant's Child and what happened then.

      6. Make up the plan of the story and retell it.

      The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo[128]

      Not always was the Kangaroo as now we do ehold him[129], but a Different Animal with four short legs. He was grey and he was woolly, and his pride was inordinate: he danced on an outcrop in the middle of Australia, and he went to the Little God Nqa.

      He went to Nqa at six before breakfast, saying, ‘Make me different from all other animals by five this afternoon.’

      Up jumped Nqa from his seat on the sand-flat and shouted, ‘Go away!’

      He was grey and he was woolly, and his pride was inordinate; he danced on a rock-ledge in the middle of Australia, and he went to the Middle God Nquing.

      He went to Nquing at eight after breakfast saying, ‘Make me different from other animals; make me, also, wonderfully popular by five this afternoon.’

      Up jumped Nquing from his burrow in the spinifex[130]