nose kept on stretching; and the Crocodile threshed his
tail like an oar, and _he_ pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and at each
pull the Elephant's Child's nose grew longer and longer--and it hurt him
hijjus!

Then the Elephant's Child felt his legs slipping, and he said through
his nose, which was now nearly five feet long, 'This is too butch for
be!'

Then the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake came down from the bank, and
knotted himself in a double-clove-hitch round the Elephant's Child's
hind legs, and said, 'Rash and inexperienced traveller, we will now
seriously devote ourselves to a little high tension, because if we do
not, it is my impression that yonder self-propelling man-of-war with the
armour-plated upper deck' (and by this, O Best Beloved, he meant the
Crocodile), 'will permanently vitiate your future career.'

That is the way all Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snakes always talk.

So he pulled, and the Elephant's Child pulled, and the Crocodile
pulled; but the Elephant's Child and the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake
pulled hardest; and at last the Crocodile let go of the Elephant's
Child's nose with a plop that you could hear all up and down the
Limpopo.

Then the Elephant's Child sat down most hard and sudden; but first he
was careful to say 'Thank you' to the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake; and
next he was kind to his poor pulled nose, and wrapped it all up in cool
banana leaves, and hung it in the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo to
cool.

'What are you doing that for?' said the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake.

''Scuse me,' said the Elephant's Child, 'but my nose is badly out of
shape, and I am waiting for it to shrink.'

'Then you will have to wait a long time,' said the
Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake. 'Some people do not know what is good for
them.'

The Elephant's Child sat there for three days waiting for his nose to
shrink. But it never grew any shorter, and, besides, it made him squint.
For, O Best Beloved, you will see and understand that the Crocodile had
pulled it out into a really truly trunk same as all Elephants have
to-day.

[Illustration: THIS is the Elephant's Child having his nose pulled
by the Crocodile. He is much surprised and astonished and hurt, and
he is talking through his nose and saying, 'Led go! You are hurtig
be!' He is pulling very hard, and so is the Crocodile; but the
Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake is hurrying through the water to help the
Elephant's Child. All that black stu