Dunno's Adventures

by Nikolai Nosov

Translated by Margaret Wettlin
freebooksforkids.net
Illustrated by Viktor & Kira Grigorievs

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Chapter Twenty-Four
BLOBS' EFFICIENCY MEASURE

The gathering of apples and pears went on all the next day. A third car came to help them — the eight-wheeled steam one belonging to Taps.

This came about in the following way.

The inhabitants of Kite Town were worried about the disappearance of Pretzel. They knew that he had driven Bendum and Twistum back to Greenville in his car, and when he did not return they feared some accident might have happened and asked Taps to drive over and find out. Taps did so. When he saw Pretzel hauling apples in his car, he wanted to do the same thing. Soon he was busy working with the others.

His friends back in Kite Town waited for him all that day and the next. When he, too, did not come back the most dreadful rumours began to circulate. Some said the old witch Baba-Yaga was encamped on the road between the two towns and ate up everyone who tried to pass. Others said it was not Baba-Yaga, but the ogre Kashchei the Deathless. Still others tried to prove that there were no such things as ogres, but that a three-headed dragon had come to Greenville. Every day this dragon ate up one of the girls, and if a boy put in an appearance it ate him instead, for boys tasted better than girls.

Dunno's Adventures

The tale of the dragon was so frightening that none of the boys had the courage to go to Greenville and find out what the trouble was. They decided that the wisest thing to do was to sit at home. But at last one of the inhabitants of Kite Town announced that he was not afraid of any old dragon, and that he would go and find out. This was the notorious Nails, of whom we have already spoken. Everyone knew that Nails was a daredevil who would not hesitate to throw himself into the very jaws of a hungry dragon. They tried to talk him out of going. But he would not listen to them. He said that he was ashamed of having caused the girls in Greenville so much trouble. Now, he said, he was going to make good all the harm he had done them. He would go to Greenville and spit on the tail of the dragon, and this would make the dragon curl up and die and the girls would be saved. Where he ever got the idea that spitting on the dragon's tail would make it curl up and die it is hard to say.

Well, he went. Many of the boys were very sorry to see him go and mourned his loss in advance. Others said there was nothing to mourn over, that if he were lost there would just be one mischief-maker the less and life would run more smoothly without him.

"But it's our fault that we could not reform him," said the mourners.

"Reform him?" said the others.

"Nothing but the grave could reform him!"

It is clear that those who mourned Nails were those who had never got a taste of his tricks, and those who did not mourn him were those who had got a very good taste of them.

Nails, as might be expected, did not come back to Kite Town. There could now be no doubt that there was a dragon in Greenville, and the most extraordinary stories were told about it. Each of the stories added another head, so that in the end the number of the dragon's heads had grown from three to one hundred.

The stories, of course, were all made up. Anyone with the least brains can easily guess why Nails didn't come back. At any rate, he was not gobbled up by the dragon, because nobody was gobbled up by the dragon. There was no dragon. Nails simply worked so hard picking apples that forgot to come back. As soon as he got to Greenville he decided he must get a saw and climb a tree at any cost. After all, climbing trees is lots of fun, and is dangerous besides. What boy can resist doing what is dangerous?

During the fruit-picking, the only Mite in Greenville who sat at home was Blobs. He spent all his time painting portraits, for there was not a girl in town who did not ask to have her picture painted. Each wanted to be the prettiest girl in Greenville. Of no avail were Blobs' efforts to prove that every girl was pretty in her own way, and that even small eyes could be pretty. Oh no! Each of them must have big eyes, long lashes, arched eyebrows, and a tiny .mouth. Blobs gave up arguing in the end, and painted them as they asked to be. That, he found, was the simplest way out. It kept them from complaining of their finished portraits, and it gave him a chance to try an "efficiency measure". Since all of them wanted to be painted in exactly the same way, Blobs decided to make what is called a "stencil". He took a piece of cardboard, cut into it a pair of big eyes, two long arched eyebrows, a very short straight nose, a tiny mouth, a chin with a dimple in it, and two small and shapely ears. On top he cut out fluffy hair, under the chin a slender neck; lower down two little hands with long fingers. When the stencil was ready he set to work making the "roughs".

This was done by putting the cardboard on a piece of paper and splashing red paint over the hole where the mouth was cut out; flesh-coloured paint over the holes where the nose, ears, and hands were; brown or yellow paint where the hair was; blue or brown paint where the eyes were.

Blobs made several of these roughs. If the girl he was painting had blue eyes and yellow hair, he took the stencil for blue eyes and yellow hair. If she had brown eyes and brown hair, he took the stencil for brown eyes and brown hair. In each case he would add a few strokes to increase the likeness, and the portrait was ready.

Blobs painted ever so many of these stencil-portraits. It speeded up the work greatly. He also decided that once he had made the stencil, any Mite could make the roughs from it, and so he took P'raps on as his assistant. The roughs that P'raps made turned out quite as well as those made by Blobs himself. Working together, Blobs and P'raps could turn out an enormous number of portraits, and this was a very good thing, for the number of girls who wanted their pictures painted increased with every day.

Dunno's Adventures

P'raps was very much pleased with his new profession and spoke proudly of himself and Blobs as "we artists". Blobs was not at all pleased and called such painting "hack-work". He said the only portraits worthy of the name were those he had painted of Snowdrop and Cornflower — all the others were good for nothing but to wrap saucepans and flower-pots in.

Fortunately his opinion was not shared by the models. The only thing they demanded of a portrait was that it be pretty — as for being a likeness, who cared about that?

There are different ways, it seems, of looking at things.

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