"DUNNO'S ADVENTURE - THE MITES OF FLOWER TOWN"
Nikolai NOSOV
Drawings by BORIS KALA USHIN
Translated from the Russian by MARGARET WETTL1N
Once upon a time, in a town in fairyland, lived some
people called the Mites. They were called the Mites because
they were very tiny. The biggest of them was no bigger than a
pine cone.
Their town was very pretty. Around every house grew daisies,
dandelions, and honeysuckle, and the streets were all named after
flowers: Blue-bell Street, Daisy Lane, and Primrose Avenue.
That is why the town was called Flower Town. Tt stood on the
bank of a tittle brook. The Mites called it Cucumber River
because so many cucumbers grew on its banks.
On the other side of the brook was a wood. The Mites made
boats out of birch-bark and crossed the brook in them when they
went to gather nuts, berries, and mushrooms in the wood. It was
hard for the Mites to pick berries because they were so small.
When they picked nuts they had to ctimb the bushes and take
saws with them to cut off the stems, for the Mites could not pick
the nuts by hand.
They sawed off mushrooms, too— sawed them off at the very
ground, then cut them into pieces and carried them home on their
shoulders like logs.
There were two kinds of Mites — boy -Mites and girl-Mites. The
boy- Mites wore long trousers or short breeches held up by
braces, and the girl-Mites wore dresses made out of all sorts
of bright stuffs. The boy-Mites couldn’t be bothered to comb
their hair, and so they cut it short, but the girl-Mites wore
their hair Jong. They loved to comb it in all sorts of pretty ways.
Some wore it in long plaits with ribbons woven into them.
Others wore it hanging about their shoulders with big bows
on top.
The boy- Mites were so proud of being boys that they would
have nothing to do with the girl-Mites. And the girl-Mites were so
proud of being girls that they would not make friends with the
hoy- Mites. IF a girl -Mite caught sight of a hoy-Mite coming down
the street, she would cross to the other side. And she was
quite right, for some of the boy -Mites w'ere so nasty they would
be sure to give her a shove or pull her hair or call her a horrid
name.
They were not o//like this, of course, but you couldn’t tell what
they were like by looking at them, and so the gir 1-Mites deci-
ded to cross the street every time, just in case. Sometimes you
could hear a boy-Mite call a girl -Mite “Stuck-up!” and the
girl-Mitc would call back “Bully!” or something else just as
rude.
Perhaps you don't believe this. Perhaps you think such things
don't happen in real life. Well, nobody says they do. Real life is
one thing, and fairy-tale life is another. Anything can happen in
fairy-tales.
In one of the houses in Blue-bell Street lived sixteen boy-Mites.
The most important of them was Doono. He was named Doono
because he did know everything, and he knew everything because
he was always reading books, There were books on his bed and
under his bed. You
couldn't find a spot in his
room without a book
on it.
He learned ail sorts of
things from these books,
and so everybody ad-
mired him and did what-
ever he said. He always
dressed in black, and
when he sat down at his
writing-table with his
spectacles on and began
reading a book, he
looked for all the world
like a professor.
In this same house lived Dr. Pillman, who looked after the
Mites when they fell ill. He always wore a white coat and a white
cap with a tassel on it. Here, too,
lived the famous tinker Bendum and
his helper Twistum. And here lived
Treacly-Sweeter who, as everyone
knew, had a great weakness for
fizzy drinks with Jots of syrup in
them. He was very polite. He liked
to have people call him Treacly-
Sweeter and was very unhappy
when they called him simply
Sweeter.
Besides these there was a hunter
named Shot. He had a little dog he
called Dot and a gun that shot corks.
There was also an artist named
Blobs and a musician named Trills.
The others were called Swifty,
Crumps, Mums, Roly-Poly, Scatter-
brain, and two brothers. P’raps and
Prob’ly, But the most famous of
them all was a Mite by the name of
Dunno. He was called Dunno because he did not know
everything- — in fact he did not know anything .
Dunno wore a bright blue hat, bright yellow trousers, a bright
orange shirt, and a bright green tie. He was very fond of bright
colours. He would dress himself up in his bright clothes and go
wandering about the streets making up all sorts of tales and telling
them to everybody he met. He loved to tease the girl-Mites. As
soon as a giri-Mite caught sight of his orange shirt coming down
the street she would turn round and run home.
Dunno had a friend named Gurtky who Jived in Daisy Lane. He
and Dun no would sit and talk for hours on end. They quarrelled
twenty times a day, but they always made it up.
One day something happened to Dunno that made him the talk
of the town. He had gone for a walk in the fields all by himself.
Suddenly a cockchafer came flying past and struck him on the
back of the head. Dunno turned a somersault in the air and fell
flat on the ground. The cockchafer kept on flying and was soon
out of sight, Dunno jumped up and looked round to see what had
struck him, but there was nothing to be seen.
“What could have hit me?” he thought. “Something must have
fallen on me.”
He looked up in the air,
either — nothing hut the sun
which was shining brightly in
the sky.
“It must have been the sun,”
he decided. “A piece must
have broken off and fallen on
my head.”
He turned round and set
out for home, and on the
way he met a friend named
Glass-Eye,
Glass-Eye was a famous
astronomer. He knew how to
make magnifying glasses out
of bits of broken bottle. Every-
thing looked bigger when seen
through these glasses. By put-
ting several of them together
he had made a telescope with
which he studied the moon and
the stars.
“Glass-Eye,” said Dunno,
“a very strange thing has hap-
pened. A piece of the sun
dropped off and hit me on
the head,”
but there was nothing there
“What are you saying?” laughed Glass-Eye. “If a piece of the
sun had hit you, it would have smashed you to smithereens. The
sun is enormous. It's even bigger than our earth.”
“It couldn’t be,” said Dunno. “The sun is no bigger than a
saucer.”
“It just seems to be because it's so very far away. The sun is a
great ball of fire. I’ve seen it through my telescope. If just a little
bit of it broke off it would smash our whole town.”
“Think of that!” said Dunno. “I never knew the sun was so big.
I ll go and fell everybody about it, they may not have heard. But
take another look at the sun through your telescope. Maybe it
does have a piece out of it after ail.”
Dunno set out for home again, and he said to everybody he
met:
“Have you heard about the sun? it’s bigger than our whole
earth. Yes, it is! And a terrible thing has happened: a piece has
broken off and is failing on us. It’ll strike any minute and smash
us all to smithereens. Go and ask Glass-Eye if you don't believe me.
Everybody laughed at him, because they knew he was always
making up stories. But Dunno kept shouting as he ran home:
“Save yourselves, everybody! A piece of the sun is falling !”
“A piece of what?”
“Of the sun! Hurry up! It’ll strike any minute, and that’ll be the
end of us! You don’t know about the sun! It’s bigger than our
earth!”
“Nonsense!”
“No nonsense at all! Glass-Eye told me so. He saw it through
his telescope !”
Everybody rushed outdoors and looked up at the sun. They
looked at it until their eyes began to water. They looked at it until
there really did seem to be a piece out of it.
“Save yourselves!” shouted Dunno. “Save yourselves as best
you can!”
The Mites ran for their things. Blobs snatched up his paints and
brushes. Trills snatched up his fiddle and banjo and French horn.
Dr. Pit l man rushed about the house searching for his medicine
bag, which had got mislaid. Roly-Poly snatched up his galoshes
and umbrella and was just dashing through the gate when he
heard Doono call out:
“Steady there now! What are you afraid of? You know what a
nit-wit Dunno is. This is just one of his ideas.”
“Ideas!” cried Dunno. “Go and ask Glass-Eye, I tell you.”
So They all ran to Glass-Eye and found out that it was, indeed,
only something Dunno had made up. How they did laugh!
“How could we have believed such a silty thing?” they said.
“How, indeed?” said Dunno. “Why, I even believed it
myself!”
That's the sort of funny fellow Dunno was!
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