Just So Stories | Page 6

From having too little to do.
Kiddies and grown-ups too-oo-oo, If we haven't enough to do-oo-oo,
We get the hump-- Cameelious hump-- The hump that is black and
blue!
We climb out of bed with a frouzly head And a snarly-yarly voice. We
shiver and scowl and we grunt and we growl At our bath and our boots
and our toys;
And there ought to be a corner for me (And I know there is one for you)
When we get the hump-- Cameelious hump-- The hump that is black
and blue!
The cure for this ill is not to sit still, Or frowst with a book by the fire;
But to take a large hoe and a shovel also, And dig till you gently
perspire;
And then you will find that the sun and the wind. And the Djinn of the
Garden too, Have lifted the hump-- 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 much
bigger. All the same, he had no manners then, and he has no manners
now, and he never will have any manners. He said, 'How!' and the
Parsee left that cake and climbed to the top of a palm tree with nothing
on but his hat, from which the rays of the sun were always reflected in
more-than-oriental splendour. And the Rhinoceros upset the oil-stove
with his nose, and the cake rolled on the sand, and he spiked that cake
on the horn of his nose, and he ate it, and he went away, waving his tail,
to the desolate and Exclusively Uninhabited Interior which abuts on the
islands of Mazanderan, Socotra, and Promontories of the Larger
Equinox. Then the Parsee came down from his palm-tree and put the
stove on its legs and recited the following Sloka, which, as you have
not heard, I will now proceed to relate:--
Them that takes cakes Which the Parsee-man bakes Makes dreadful
mistakes.
And there was a great deal more in that than you would think.
Because, five weeks later, there was a heat wave in the Red Sea, and
everybody took off all the clothes they had. The Parsee took off his hat;
but the Rhinoceros took off his skin and carried it over his shoulder as
he came down to the beach to bathe. In those days it buttoned
underneath with three buttons and looked like a waterproof. He said
nothing whatever about the Parsee's cake, because he had eaten it all;
and he never had any manners, then, since, or henceforward. He
waddled straight into the water and blew bubbles through his nose,
leaving his skin on the beach.
Presently the Parsee came by and found the skin, and he smiled one
smile that ran all round his face two times. Then he danced three times
round the skin and rubbed his hands. Then he went to his camp and
filled his hat with cake-crumbs, for the Parsee never ate anything but
cake, and never swept out his camp. He took that skin, and he shook
that skin, and he scrubbed that skin, and he rubbed that skin just as full
of old, dry, stale, tickly cake-crumbs and some burned currants as ever
it could possibly hold. Then he climbed to the top of his palm-tree and

waited for the Rhinoceros to come out of the water and put it on.
And the Rhinoceros did. He buttoned it up with the three buttons, and it
tickled like cake crumbs