Читать книгу Two-Legs онлайн

3 страница из 30

“Who, in the name of wonder, are these?” asked the lion.

“They’re animals,” said the stag. “They can walk. But how oddly they do it! Why don’t they leap on all fours, seeing that they have four legs? Then they would get along much faster.”

“Oh,” said the snake, “I have no legs at all and it seems to me I get along pretty fast!’

“I don’t believe they are animals,” said the nightingale. “They have no feathers and no hair, except that bit on their heads.”

“Scales would do quite as well,” said the pike, popping his head out of the river.

“Some of us have to manage with our bare skin,” said the earth-worm, quietly.

“They have no tails,” said the mouse. “Never in their lives have they been animals!”

“I have no tail,” said the toad. “And nobody can deny that I am an animal.”

“Look!” said the lion. “Just look! One of them is taking up a stone in his fore-paws: I couldn’t do that.”

“But I could,” said the orang-outang. “There’s nothing in that. For the rest, I can satisfy your curiosity. Those two, in point of fact, are animals. They are husband and wife, their name is Two-Legs and they are distant relations of my own.”