Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
page 11 of 122 (09%)
page 11 of 122 (09%)
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The horrible hump--
The hump that is black and blue! I get it as well as you-oo-oo-- If I haven't enough to do-oo-oo-- We all get hump-- Cameelious hump-- Kiddies and grown-ups too! 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 from whose hat the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental splendour. And the Parsee lived by the Red Sea with nothing but his hat and his knife and a cooking-stove of the kind that you must particularly never touch. And one day he took flour and water and currants and plums and sugar and things, and made himself one cake which was two feet across and three feet thick. It was indeed a Superior Comestible (that's magic), and he put it on stove because he was allowed to cook on the stove, and he baked it and he baked it till it was all done brown and smelt most sentimental. But just as he was going to eat it there came down to the beach from the Altogether Uninhabited Interior one Rhinoceros with a horn on his nose, two piggy eyes, and few manners. In those days the Rhinoceros's skin fitted him quite tight. There were no wrinkles in it anywhere. He looked exactly like a Noah's Ark Rhinoceros, but of course |
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