Читать книгу Fairy tales of the wise grandma Agatha - Liudmila Petrovna Rzhevskaya - Страница 4

One summer, Nastenka went into the woods, to pick berries for the grandmother Agata. She went into the forest thicket and saw under the tree a small red-haired kitty. The cat was very large and, for her pity, very sick. It could hardly move its paws and lift its head. Nastenka forgot about all her berries, picked up the kitty and ran home. Mom, seeing Nastenka, flung up her hands and cried out at her:

“Nastenka, why did you bring the little tiger home? What if a tigress comes to his smell here? Can you ever imagine what will happen to us?”

Nastenka opened her little mouth in fright and said:

“But Mom, it was alone in the forest, and then I thought it was a kitty. He really looks like a cat. Mom, how can it be, he’s alive, he needs to be cured, and the tigress, maybe, has already forgotten about him.”

The mother agreed that the tiger needed to be cured, because he was really very sick, but after that, Nastenka should take him to the forest. And Nastenka agreed with this.

And Nastenka’s mother worked as a veterinarian in the village. Her name was Maria. For a whole month Nastenka with her mom cured a tiger cub. During this time, the tiger cub became so attached to Nastenka that it followed her like a dog. And the inhabitants of the village gave him the nickname Sharik. Everyone laughed when Nastenka went out into the street with her fosterling: “Ah, it’s you, Nastenka, with your Sharik came to us. What news will you tell us?” The girl sat down on the log next to other villagers and their children, the tiger cub was climbing her knees, licking her nose, wrinkling its snout and sneezing. And everyone laughed and said: “Well, it is a real dog; the name Sharik is so suitable.” So Nastenka and her mother began to call him Sharik. Time passed and Sharik grew up. He demanded more and more porridge and meat. And mother Maria once told Nastenka: “Well, Nastenka, take your Sharik into the forest. He is a forest animal and must live in the forest. And we can not feed him. We can hardly feed ourselves.” But Nastenka did not want to part with her Sharik. They were really attached to each other.

The tiger cub grew for the summer, his paws were much stronger, his voice was much coarser, and when he growled at strangers, they were afraid to approach Nastenka and tried to stay away from her. And one day the boys started a fight, Nastenka rushed to set them apart, Sharik rushed to the boys to and, probably, he thought that the boys wanted to offend his adorable little girl, such a lovely mistress, and began to bite the boys randomly. They roared and rushed off the tiger cub, and Sharik ran after them, Nastenka ran after Sharik, shouting and cursing: “Oh you rascal, why you have bitten the boys, don’t you dare to do it again!” But then Nastenka remembered that her Sharik was the forest animal and he did not understand the human language. She sat down on the grass, called Sharik to her, embraced him and began to talk with him in his own language, whispering something in his ear that only Sharik and Nastenka understood. Tiger guiltily lowered his head and followed Nastenka. And in the evening neighbors came to Nastenka’s mom place, with complaints of Nastenka and her Sharik. The tiger cub guiltily hid under the bed and angrily rumbled, knowing that the conversation was about him. Nastenka stood up for her fosterling: “Why did the boys fight? If it was not Sharik, no one would set them apart, and maybe they would beat each other even more than Sharik bit them.”