Animal farm / Скотный двор. Уровень 2

But her appetite was excellent. She often ran away from work and went to the drinking pool. There she stood and gazed foolishly at her own reflection in the water. But there were something more serious. One day, when Mollie flirted her long tail and chewed at a stalk of hay, Clover took her aside.

“Mollie,” she said, “I have something very serious to say to you. This morning you looked over the hedge that divides Animal Farm from Foxwood. One of Mr. Pilkington’s men stood on the other side of the hedge. And I saw this-he talked to you and you allowed him to stroke your nose.

What does that mean, Mollie?”

“He didn’t! I wasn’t! It isn’t true!” cried Mollie.

“Mollie! Look at me. Do you give me your word of honour that the man did not stroke your nose?”

“It isn’t true!” repeated Mollie, but she did not look at Clover. The next moment she galloped away into the field.

Clover did not say anything to the others. She went to Mollie’s stall and turned over the straw with her hoof.

Clover found a little pile of lump sugar and several bunches of ribbon of different colours under the straw.

Three days later Mollie disappeared. For some weeks nobody saw her. Then the pigeons reported that they saw her on the other side of Willingdon. She was between the shafts of a smart dogcart, which was outside a public-house[20 - public-house – таверна]. A fat red-faced man in breeches and gaiters, probably a publican[21 - publican – трактирщик], stroked her nose and fed her with sugar.

She had a new coat and she wore a scarlet ribbon round her forelock. She was happy, so the pigeons said. None of the animals ever mentioned Mollie again.

In January there came hard weather. The earth was like iron, and the animals did not work in the fields. They attended meetings in the big barn. The pigs planned out the future work. The pigs, who were manifestly cleverer than the other animals, will decide all questions of farm policy. But their decisions will be ratified by a majority vote.

This arrangement worked well enough. But the disputes between Snowball and Napoleon! These two disagreed at every point where disagreement was possible. If one of them offered to sow a bigger acreage with barley, the other demanded a bigger acreage of oats. If one of them said that a field was just right for cabbages, the other declared that it was useless for anything except roots. There were violent debates between them.