were as valuable to Noah as Sabz Ali is to us, and I
should not be surprised if he made them travel on all-fours in the risky
places. Fathers were very dictatorial in those days, and there was nobody
about to make them consider their dignity.
One can imagine the scene. Ararat, a muddy pyramid dotted here and there
with olive trees--curious, by the way, to find olives so high!--in the
receding waters the vagrant raven cheerfully picking out the eye of a
defunct pterodactyl. The heavy clouds rolling off the sodden world--they
must have indeed been heavy clouds, nimbus of the first water--as they had
raised the world's water-level 250 feet per day during "the flood" ...
surely a record output!
The primeval family party, sadly poking about along the expanding margin
of the world, noting how Abel Brown's tall chimney was beginning to show,
and how Cain Jones' wigwam was clean gone. Mrs. Shem said she knew it
would, the mortar work had been so terribly scamped.
And Naboth Robinson's vineyard--well, _it_ was in a pretty mess, to be
sure, and serve him right, for Mrs. Noah had frequently offered him two of
her (second) best milch mammoths for it; yet he had held on to his nasty
sour grapes, like the mean old curmudgeon that he was.
And now Hammy must set to work and tidy it up; and oh! what lots of nice
manure was floating about, all for nothing the cartload ... And so the
primeval family felt better, and went back to the ark to tea, feeling
almost cheerful, but rather lonesome.
Pages:
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228