"the-beginning-of-the-armadilloes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kipling Rudyard)

{BEGINNING_OF_ARMADILLOES ^paragraph 50}
'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 leetle 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 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, and less
like a chestnut-burr, than you used to.'
{BEGINNING_OF_ARMADILLOES ^paragraph 55}
'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.'
'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'tЇ Painted
Jaguar be surprised! Let's go and find him.'
By and by they found Painted Jaguar, still nursing his paddy-paw
that had been hurt the night before. He was so astonished that he fell
three times backward over his own painted tail without stopping.
{BEGINNING_OF_ARMADILLOES ^paragraph 60}
'Good morning!' said Stickly-Prickly. 'And how is your dear gracious
Mummy this morning?'
'She is quite well, thank you,' said Painted Jaguar; 'but you must
forgive me if I do not at this precise moment recall your name.'
'That's unkind of you,' said Stickly-Prickly, 'seeing that this time
yesterday you tried to scoop me out of my shell with your paw.'
'But you hadn't any shell. It was all prickles,' said Painted
Jaguar. 'I know it was. Just look at my paw!'
'You told me to drop into the turbid Amazon and be drowned,' said
Slow-Solid. 'Why are you so rude and forgetful to-day?'
{BEGINNING_OF_ARMADILLOES ^paragraph 65}
'Don't you remember what your mother told you?' said
Stickly-Prickly,-