Читать книгу Circular Saws - Humbert Wolfe - Страница 5

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ONCE upon a time there was a princess whose mother would not buy her an umbrella. This was due to the wicked incompetence of the Prime Minister of that country, who, having no children of his own, spent all his money on swords instead of umbrellas. (Yes, I know swords are nicer generally, but these weren’t; besides they were two-edged.) Moreover, her mother went and bought her a most unbecoming mackintosh—the sort that cuts your chin. And so, as it was raining all the time (for this princess lived at Kilcreggan in Dumbartonshire), she asked to be turned into a frog or a toad, because they didn’t need umbrellas, and their mackintoshes fit at the neck.

Well, she was, and then she found that being a frog she couldn’t use her scooter, or read “Antony and Cleopatra” to her mother, or go into Kensington Gardens with her father. (No! Kensington Gardens isn’t at Kilcreggan, but this is a fairy princess, and so it doesn’t matter.) So she unwished herself, and she was a princess, and she had no umbrella and a mackintosh that didn’t fit at the neck. But it was a drought.[A] So all’s well that ends well.

[A] A drought is when it doesn’t rain at all. The scene of the story has been shifted from Scotland.