at he was doing the Elephant's Child put out his
trunk and plucked a large bundle of grass, dusted it clean against his
fore-legs, and stuffed it into his own mouth.

'Vantage number two!' said the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake. 'You
couldn't have done that with a mear-smear nose. Don't you think the sun
is very hot here?'

'It is,' said the Elephant's Child, and before he thought what he was
doing he schlooped up a schloop of mud from the banks of the great
grey-green, greasy Limpopo, and slapped it on his head, where it made a
cool schloopy-sloshy mud-cap all trickly behind his ears.

'Vantage number three!' said the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake. 'You
couldn't have done that with a mere-smear nose. Now how do you feel
about being spanked again?'

''Scuse me,' said the Elephant's Child, 'but I should not like it at
all.'

'How would you like to spank somebody?' said the
Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake.

'I should like it very much indeed,' said the Elephant's Child.

'Well,' said the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake, 'you will find that new
nose of yours very useful to spank people with.'

'Thank you,' said the Elephant's Child, 'I'll remember that; and now I
think I'll go home to all my dear families and try.'

So the Elephant's Child went home across Africa frisking and whisking
his trunk. When he wanted fruit to eat he pulled fruit down from a tree,
instead of waiting for it to fall as he used to do. When he wanted grass
he plucked grass up from the ground, instead of going on his knees as he
used to do. When the flies bit him he broke off the branch of a tree
and used it as fly-whisk; and he made himself a new, cool, slushy-squshy
mud-cap whenever the sun was hot. When he felt lonely walking through
Africa he sang to himself down his trunk, and the noise was louder than
several brass bands.

He went especially out of his way to find a broad Hippopotamus (she was
no relation of his), and he spanked her very hard, to make sure that the
Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake had spoken the truth about his new trunk.
The rest of the time he picked up the melon rinds that he had dropped on
his way to the Limpopo--for he was a Tidy Pachyderm.

One dark evening he came back to all his dear families, and he coiled up
his trunk and said, 'How do you do?' They were very glad to see him,
and immediately said, 'Come here and be spanked for your 'satiable
curtiosity.'

'Pooh,' said the Elephant's Child. 'I don't think you peo