"Children's Books - White, E.B. - Charlotte's Web" - читать интересную книгу автора (Children's Books)

sheepfold down below for the sheep, a pigpen down below for Wilbur, and
it was full of all sorts of things that you find in barns: ladders,
grindstones, pitch forks, monkey wrenches, scythes, lawn mowers, snow
shovels, ax handles, milk pails, water buckets, empty grain sacks, and
rusty rat traps. It was the kind of barn that swallows like to build
their nests in. It was the kind of barn that children like to play in.
And the whole thing was owned by Fern's uncle, Mr. Homer L. Zuckerman.

Wilbur's new home was in the lower part of the barn, directly underneath
the cows. Mr. Zuckerman knew that a manure pile is a good place to
keep a young pig. Pigs need warmth, and it was warm and comfortable
down there in the barn cellar on the south side.

Fern came almost every day to visit him. She found an old milking stool
that had been discarded, and she placed the stool in the sheepfold next
to Wilbur's pen. Here she sat quietly during the long afternoons,
thinking and listening and watching Wilbur. The sheep soon got to know
her and trust her. So did the geese, who lived with the sheep. All the
animals trusted her, she was so quiet and friendly. Mr. Zuckerman did
not allow her to take Wilbur out, and he did not allow her to get into
the pigpen. But he told Fern that she could sit on the stool and watch
Wilbur as long as she wanted to. It made her happy just to be near the
pig, and it made Wilbur happy to know that she was sitting there, right
outside his pen. But he never had any fun no walks, no rides, no swims.

One afternoon in June, when Wilbur was almost two months old, he
wandered out into his small yard outside the barn. Fern had not arrived
for her usual visit. Wilbur stood in the sun feeling lonely and bored.

"There's never anything to do around here," he thought. He walked
slowly to his food trough and sniffed to see if anything had been
overlooked at lunch. He found a small strip of potato skin and ate it.
His back itched, so he leaned against the fence and rubbed against the
boards. When he tired of this, he walked indoors, climbed to the top of
the manure pile, and sat down. He didn't feel like going to sleep, he
didn't feel like digging, he was tired of standing still, tired of lying
down. "I'm less than two months old and I'm tired of living," he said.
He walked out to the yard again.

"When I'm out here," he said, "there's no place to go but in. When I'm
indoors, there's no place to go but out in the yard."

"That's where you're wrong, my friend, my friend," said a voice.

Wilbur looked through the fence and saw the goose standing there.

"You don't have to stay in that dirty-little dirty-little dirty-little
yard," said the goose, who talked rather fast. "One of the boards is
loose. Push on it, push-push-push on it, and come on out!"