Читать книгу The Complete Works of Algernon Blackwood. Novels, Short Stories, Horror Classics, Occult & Supernatural Tales, Plays онлайн

1335 страница из 1552

'It's a rhyme, and not a story though,' he added, anticipating perhaps their possible disappointment. For the recent talk about expenses had chilled his imagination too much for an instantaneous story, whereas rhymes came ever to him easily.

'All right! Let's have it anyhow,' came the verdict in sentences of

French and English. And in the breathless pause that followed, even

Mother looking up expectantly from her busy fingers, was heard this

strange fate of the Thin Child who stole another's bread-crumb:—

He then grew thinner than the thin,

The thin end of the wedge;

He grew so pitifully thin

It set his teeth on edge;

But the edge it set his teeth upon

Was worse than getting thinner,

For it was the edge of appetite,

And his teeth were in no dinner!

There was a deep silence. Mother looked as though she expected more,— the good part yet to come. The rhyme fell flat as a pancake, for of course the children did not understand it. Its nonsense, clever enough, escaped them. True nonsense is for grown-ups only. Jane Anne stared steadily at him with a puzzled frown. Her face wore an expression like a moth.