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

This is a picture of the whole story of the Jaguar and the Hedgehog and the Tortoise and the Armadillo all in a heap. It looks rather the same any way to turn it. The Tortoise is in the middle, learning how to bend, and that is why the shelly plates on his back are so spread apart. He is standing on the Hedgehog, who is waiting to learn how to swim. The Hedgehog is a Japanesy Hedgehog, because I couldn’t find our own Hedgehogs in the garden when I wanted to draw them. (It was daytime, and they had gone to bed under the dahlias.) Painted Jaguar is looking over the edge, with his paddy-paw carefully tied up by his mother, because he pricked himself scooping the Hedgehog. He is much surprised to see what the Tortoise is doing, and his paw is hurting him. The snouty thing with the little eye that Painted Jaguar is trying to climb over is the Armadillo that the Tortoise and the Hedgehog are going to run into when they have finished bending and swimming. It is all a magic picture, and that is one of the reasons why I haven’t drawn the Jaguar’s whiskers[168]. The other reason was that he was so young that his whiskers had not grown. The Jaguar’s pet name with his Mummy was Dofles.

Stickly-Prickly helped to unlace Tortoise’s back-plates, so that by twisting and straining Slow-and-Solid actually managed to curl up a tiddy wee bit[169].

‘Excellent!’ said Stickly-Prickly; ‘but I shouldn’t do any more just now. It’s making you black in the face. Kindly lead me into the water once again and I’ll practise that side-stroke which you say is so easy.’ And so Stickly-Prickly practised, and Slow-and-Solid swam alongside.

‘Excellent!’ said Slow-and-Solid. ‘A little more practice will make you a regular whale. Now, if I may trouble you to unlace me back and front plates two holes more, I’ll try that fascinating bend that you say is so easy. Won’t Painted Jaguar be surprised!’

‘Excellent!’ said Stickly-Prickly, all wet from the turbid Amazon. ‘I declare, I shouldn’t know you from one of my own family. Two holes, I think, you said? A little more expression, please, and don’t grunt quite so much, or Painted Jaguar may hear us. When you’ve finished, I want to try that long dive which you say is so easy. Won’t Painted Jaguar be surprised!’

And so Stickly-Prickly dived, and Slow-and-Solid dived alongside.

‘Excellent!’ said Slow-and-Solid. ‘A little more attention to holding your breath and you will be able to keep house at the bottom of the turbid Amazon. Now I’ll try that exercise of wrapping my hind legs round my ears which you say is so peculiarly[170] comfortable. Won’t Painted Jaguar be surprised!’

‘Excellent!’ said Stickly-Prickly. ‘But it’s straining your back-plates a little. They are all overlapping now, instead of lying side by side.’

‘Oh, that’s the result of exercise,’ said Slow-and-solid. ‘I’ve noticed that your prickles seem to be melting into one another, and that you’re growing to look rather more like a pine-cone[171], and less like a chestnut-burr[172], than you used to.’

‘Am I?’ said Stickly-Prickly. ‘That comes from my soaking in the water. Oh, won’t Painted Jaguar be surprised!’

They went on with their exercises, each helping the other, till morning came; and when the sun was high they rested and dried themselves. Then they saw that they were both of them quite different from what they had been.

‘Stickly-Prickly,’ said Tortoise after breakfast, ‘I am not what I was yesterday; but I think that I may yet amuse Painted Jaguar[173].’

‘That was the very thing I was thinking just now,’ said Stickly-Prickly. ‘I think scales are a tremendous improvement on prickles – to say nothing of being able to swim. Oh, won’t Painted Jaguar be surprised! Let’s go and find him.’