Сказки / Fairy Tales. Уровень 1

The Camel looked at his own reflection in a pool of water.

‘My friend,’ said the Djinn, ‘they say you don’t work. Is it true?’

‘Humph!’ said the Camel.

The Djinn sat down, with his chin in his hand, and began to think. The Camel looked at his own reflection in the pool of water again.

‘I’ll give you three tasks on Monday morning,’ said the Djinn.

‘Humph!’ said the Camel.

‘Why do you say ‘Humph!’?’ asked the Djinn; ‘I want you to work.’

And the Camel said ‘Humph!’ again. But suddenly he saw his back and was afraid: his back puffed up into a great big humph.

‘Do you see that?’ said the Djinn. ‘That’s your own humph. You don’t work, and you have it! Now begin to work!’

‘How can I work,’ asked the Camel, ‘with this humph on my back?’

‘Today is Thursday. You will be able to work now for three days without any food’ said the Djinn, ‘because you missed three days – Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. You can live on your humph. Come out of the Desert and go to the Three. Begin to work! And behave yourself!’

And the Camel went away to join the Three.

And from that day to this the Camel always wears a humph. But he doesn’t know how to behave.

How the Rhinoceros got his skin

Once upon a time, on an uninhabited island on the shores of the Red Sea, there lived a Parsee. And the Parsee lived by the Red Sea with nothing but his hat, from which the rays of the sun were reflected, and his knife and a cooking-stove. And one day he took flour and water and currants and plums and sugar and things, and made himself a cake.

The cake was two feet across and three feet thick. The Parsee put it on the stove, and he baked it. He baked it till it was all brown and smelt most sentimental.

But when he wanted to eat it there came down to the beach a Rhinoceros with a horn on his nose, two piggy eyes, and bad manners. In those days the Rhinoceros’s skin was quite tight. There were no wrinkles in it anywhere. He had no manners then, and he has no manners now, and he never will have any manners.

He said, ‘How!’ and the Parsee left that cake and climbed to the top of a palm tree with his hat, from which the rays of the sun were reflected. The Rhinoceros upset the oil-stove with his nose. The cake rolled on the sand, and he spiked that cake on the horn of his nose, and he ate it. And he went away. Then the Parsee came down from his palm-tree.

Five weeks later, the Red Sea was very hot, and everybody took off all the clothes they had.