Rikki-tikki with the white teeth.
Bother my white teeth! Have you ever heard where she keeps her eggs?
In the melon bed, on the end nearest the wall, where the sun strikes
nearly all day. She hid them there weeks ago.
And you never thought it worth while to tell me? The end nearest the
wall, you said?
Rikki-tikki, you are not going to eat her eggs?
Not eat exactly; no. Darzee, if you have a grain of sense you will fly
off to the stables and pretend that your wing is broken, and let Nagaina
chase you away to this bush. I must get to the melon-bed, and if I went
there now she d see me.
Darzee was a feather-brained little fellow who could never hold more
than one idea at a time in his head. And just because he knew that
Nagaina s children were born in eggs like his own, he didn t think at
first that it was fair to kill them. But his wife was a sensible bird,
and she knew that cobra s eggs meant young cobras later on. So she flew
off from the nest, and left Darzee to keep the babies warm, and continue
his song about the death of Nag. Darzee was very like a man in some
ways.
She fluttered in front of Nagaina by the rubbish heap and cried out,
Oh, my wing is broken! The boy in the house threw a stone at me and
broke it. Then she fluttered more desperately than ever.
Nagaina lifted up her head and hissed, You warned Rikki-tikki when I
would have killed him. Indeed and truly, you ve chosen a bad place to
be lame in. And she moved toward Darzee s wife, slipping along over the
dust.
The boy broke it with a stone! shrieked Darzee s wife.
Well! It may be some consolation to you when you re dead to know that I
shall settle accounts with the boy. My husband lies on the rubbish heap
this morning, but before night the boy in the house will lie very still.
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