deceive them. Like me. He was frightened to death - his ears stood up like two exclamation points, his eyes popped out on his forehead. When я его окликнула, он испустил долгое отчаянное стенание, призывая меня поспешить, не то эти каннибалы до него доберутся. He must be rescued, as soon as possible!

Well, I helped him out: I made my way through the thickets of nettles, leaned over the barbed wire and grabbed him by the collar - there was no time left to run to the gate, judging by the expression in the eyes of these geese. Naturally, he did not learn any lesson from this. As soon as he settled safely on my shoulder and we moved a good distance from the geese, he returned to his usual cheerful enthusiasm. And all the way home, a monologue sounded over my ear, that they told him yes, that he answered them, and halfway through he announced his decision (which I nipped in the bud by firmly grabbing his tail) to go back and tell them something else. By the time we got home, Solomon - at least in his own eyes - was already a new Marco Polo. And since that day we have not had a quiet moment. Summoned by a cry that made my blood run cold, I rescued him from one misfortune after another. One day, convinced that she was running away from him, he chased after a cow that was being baked by horseflies. Great fun - to rush through the meadow, the wind flutters his tail, and his long dark legs work like a racehorse ... Only the cow suddenly turned around, saw that a dashing cowboy was chasing her on the heels, and in turn chased him.

This time, I rescued him from a well-placed fence, on which he perfectly portrayed a Hartted Deer, and the horns of a cow were only an inch from his quivering dark nose. But when he scared the tiny lamb, he was less fortunate. He had to look for salvation in a hedge on a steep cliff above the forest, and by the time he reached it, the lamb's mother was already so close that he rushed through the hedge, not looking what awaited him ahead. While I wearily made my way through the forest in response to his call for help, he suddenly appeared on the edge of a cliff, jumped into nowhere and ingloriously flopped into the liquid mud.

But that didn't teach him anything either. The very next day, I saw him stalking a small kitten in the same forest in his own inimitable manner - busily hiding behind every blade of grass, and crawling on the bare space on his belly. I didn't intervene - his smug muzzle glowed with such enthusiasm, his eyes burned with such inspirational fire! And I thought that the kitten did not threaten him in any way.

But I was wrong. A few minutes later, a volcanic explosion was heard, branches crackled deafeningly, silence fell, interrupted by that familiar cry for help. Sneaking his way through the woods, Solomon apparently ran into his old enemy, a farm cat who hunted mice. Судя по тому, как кот промелькнул мимо меня, когда я кинулась в лес, их встреча напугала его не меньше, чем Соломshe. Indeed, it turned out that Columbus was yelling for a different reason. Just when he took cover in a tree, the kitten followed his example and climbed up the same tree. And here Solomon desperately clung to the trunk at a height of six feet, and the kitten, which could not go around him, stopped right under his tail. And Solomon in all his glory, a magnificent imposing Siamese, cried out, because a kitten, the size of a flea, did not let him come down.

After that, Solomon tried to stay away from the forest for some time and got into the habit of sitting on the garden fence, and when we asked him why he did not go on another research expedition, he pretended to be Waiting for a Friend. Unfortunately, he became interested in horses as a result.

Unfortunately - for as soon as Solomon became interested in something, he rushed to a curious novelty. Unfortunately - for very soon the headmistress of the local riding school called me and asked me to keep him at home when her wards pass by. «Он пугает лошадей, — сказала she. “Little Patricia has fallen into nettles twice already, and her mother doesn’t like it very much.”

We objected indignantly that horses were not afraid of cats. «А вот вашей пугаются, — возразила she. “Solomon,” she said, “hid in the grass until the first horse passed by, and then jumped out into the road and began to prancing after her. Well, as if mimicking her,” the headmistress added, although, of course, this is ridiculous. “The first horse behaved calmly, but the rest (here we admitted that she was right) had a real tantrum.”

Care had to be taken that from then on Solomon, when the wards of the headmistress drove by, depicted a horse on the windowsill in the hallway. It was not difficult to find out in advance about their approach - hooves rattled, the rider's instructions poured in to watch his knees, look at his elbows, and there was a noise, according to old man Adams, that from a herd of enraged elephants. Unfortunately, the lone rider did not signal himself in this way, so sometimes we could not intercept our new-born Derby winner, and he, prancing, followed his next idol. Often we guessed that someone had ridden past, only to find that Solomon had disappeared from the house. Fighting this hobby, we used all sorts of means, except for the cage. They even brought in goldfish, since everything that moved attracted him, and put an aquarium in the living room just for him.

First, Sheba and Solomon were charmed by fish. They sat down in front of the aquarium and just like a pair of tennis players watching the ball, they watched like fish, waving their tails, glide in the water. But then Solomon was convinced that they could not be reached either through the wall or through the top of the aquarium, and they did not even think to be afraid of him, and, having lost all interest in them, silently slipped out of the room. Charles, completely absorbed by the fish, did not notice either his disappearance or the rider in a hunting suit on the road. And I was in the kitchen and found out about the last escapade when the telephone rang and the farmer from the other end of the valley said that he didn’t know if I knew, but only our black-faced cat ran right past after the hunter. And so briskly - well, just like an Arabian horse, but only the horse has a red ribbon on its tail, which means it kicks ...

I don't know what else he had in mind to say.” I dropped the phone and went full steam ahead. When я их нагнала, Соломон по-прежнему без ведома всадника упрямо следовал за ним в непосредственной близости от пары зловещего вида копыт. Hunter looked around in admiration as I picked up Solomon in my arms. “Well, the devil,” he said, “how far has he run! Yes, he should be born a horse!

Naturally, he had never seen either Solomon or me before, and seemed to be at a loss when, holding Big-Eared tightly by the scruff of the neck, I said that because of some such praise, this whole horse story began.

Chapter Fourteen
THE GREAT MYSTERY OF THE PHEASANT
Our garden used to be a real paradise for naturalists. Jackdaws nested in our pipe. During the mating season, we had to wake up at dawn - first the parents woke up and started talking among themselves, and then, separated from our ears by only the thickness of a brick, four or five chicks began to hiss, demanding breakfast. But, as Charles said, what was that compared to the sight of a black tail sticking trustingly out of our chimney while the tail's owner fed his babies inside?

Blackbirds, without hesitation, crushed snails on our path, knocking like blacksmiths and giving it the appearance of an oyster counter. Their relatives, when we drank tea on the lawn, joined us and pulled earthworms out of the ground, like reddish-brown rubber bands, completely discouraging the appetite of our guests. And one day—to prove how Mother Nature relies on us, my grandmother said—a cuckoo chick settled on our doorstep. Every morning, when I opened the door, I saw him on the veranda, crouched on the floor next to a milk bottle. Why near her, we never knew. Unless he was sad alone and he mistook the bottle for another cuckoo. The cuckoo did not try to get to the milk, and as soon as I took the bottle into the house, he, jumping up and flapping his wings, moved to a pile of stones behind the house and watched closely through the window what we were doing in the kitchen.

He did not take his eyes off us, even when he was fed by a dull-looking bunting, which soon had to hang in the air to throw food into a wide-open huge beak. We were terribly happy when he grew up and flew to Africa. My grandmother, deeply distressed that we would not allow her to raise him (he reminded her of Gladstone, she declared, and Aunt Louise would have had no trouble feeding him), said that we were not worthy of the