ulled, and pulled, and
pulled, and his 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.

At the end of the third day a fly came and stung him on the shoulder,
and before he knew what he was doing he lifted up his trunk and hit that
fly dead with the end of it.

''Vantage number one!' said the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake. 'You
couldn't have done that with a mere-smear nose. Try and eat a little
now.'

Before he thought wh