"E. Nesbit - The Dragon Tamers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nesbit Edith)

believe that there could be nothing there that presently they very nearly did believe it.

Then the blacksmith took his shovel in one hand and his riveting hammer in the other, and hung the old
stable lantern on his little finger, and went down to get the coals.
"I am not taking the hammer because I think there is anything there," said he, "but it is handy for breaking
the large lumps of coal."

"I quite understand," said his wife, who had brought the coal home in her apron that very afternoon, and
knew that it was all coal-dust.

So he went down the winding stairs to the dungeon, and stood at the bottom of the steps holding the
lantern above his head just to see that the dungeon really was empty as usual. Half of it was empty as
usual, except for the old iron and odds and ends, and the firewood and the coals. But the other side was
not empty. It was quite full, and what it was full of was Dragon.

"It must have come up those nasty broken steps from goodness knows where," said the blacksmith to
himself, trembling all over, as he tried to creep back up the winding stairs.

But the dragon was too quick for him--it put out a great claw and caught him by the leg, and as it moved
it rattled like a great bunch of keys, or like the sheet-iron they make thunder out of in pantomimes.

"No you don't," said the dragon, in a spluttering voice, like a damp squib.

"Deary, deary me," said poor John, trembling more than ever in the claw of the dragon; "here's a nice end
for a respectable blacksmith!"

The dragon seemed very much struck by this remark. "Do you mind saying that again?" said he, quite
politely. So John said again, very distinctly:
"Here--Is--A--Nice--End--For--A--Respectable--Blacksmith."

"I didn't know," said the dragon. "Fancy now! You're the very man I wanted."

"So I understood you to say before," said John, his teeth chattering.

"Oh, I don't mean what you mean," said the dragon; "but I should like you to do a job for me. One of my
wings has got some of the rivets out of it just above the joint. Could you put that to rights?"

"I might, sir," said John, politely, for you must always be polite to a possible customer, even if he be a
dragon.

"A master craftsman--you are a master, of course?--can see in a minute what's wrong," the dragon went
on. "Just come round here and feel my plates, will you?"

John timidly went round when the dragon took his claw away; and, sure enough, the dragon's off wing
was hanging loose and all anyhow, and several of the plates near the joint certainly wanted riveting.

The dragon seemed to be made almost entirely of iron armour--a sort of tawny, red-rust colour it was;
from damp, no doubt--and under it he seemed to be covered with something furry.

All the blacksmith welled up in John's heart, and he felt more at ease.