Сказки про кролика Питера. Уровень 1 / The Tale of Peter Rabbit

But Nutkin skipped up and down, singing —

�Hum-a-bum! buzz! buzz!

Hum-a-bum buzz!

As I went over Tipple-tine

I met a flock of bonny swine;

Some yellow-nacked, some yellow backed!

They were the very bonniest swine

That e’er went over Tipple-tine.’

Old Mr. Brown turned up his eyes in disgust at the impertinence of Nutkin.

But he ate up the honey!

The squirrels filled their little sacks

with nuts

.

But Nutkin sat upon a big flat rock, and played ninepins with a crab apple and green fir-cones.

On the sixth day, which was Saturday, the squirrels came again for the last time; they brought a new-laid egg in a little rush basket as a last parting present for Old Brown.

But Nutkin ran in front laughing, and shouting —

�Humpty Dumpty lies in the beck,

With a white counterpane round his neck,

Forty doctors and forty wrights,

Cannot put Humpty Dumpty to rights!’

Now old Mr.

Nutkin became more and more impertinent —

�Old Mr. B! Old Mr. B!

Hickamore, Hackamore,

on the King’s kitchen door;

All the King’s horses,

and all the King’s men,

Couldn’t drive Hickamore, Hackamore,

Off the King’s kitchen door.’

Nutkin danced up and down like a sunbeam; but still Old Brown said nothing at all.

Nutkin began again —

�Arthur O’Bower has broken his band,

He comes roaring up the land!

The King of Scots with all his power,

Cannot turn Arthur of the Bower!’

Nutkin made a whirring noise to sound like the wind, and he took a running jump right onto the head of Old Brown!..

Then all at once there was a flutterment and a scufflement and a loud �Squeak!’

The other squirrels scuttered away into the bushes.

When they came back very cautiously, peeping round the tree – there was Old Brown sitting on his door-step, quite still, with his eyes closed, as if nothing had happened.

This looks like the end of the story; but it isn’t.

Old Brown carried Nutkin into his house, and held him up by the tail, intending to skin him; but Nutkin pulled so very hard that his tail broke in two, and he dashed up the staircase and escaped out of the attic window.