--- title: Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 4: How the Leopard got his Spots, part 2 (One, two, three, and where's your breakfast?) — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 4: How the Leopard got his Spots, part 2 (One, two, three, and where's your breakfast?)», a lesson of the books course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: The Leopard and the hunter wait for dark, and eac --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Books](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/) / Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 4:… # Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 4: How the Leopard got his Spots, part 2 (One, two, three, and where's your breakfast?) Lesson 78 of the books course of Mova's primary school: 24 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/0/) — The Leopard and the hunter wait for dark, and each grabs something he can smell and feel but not see; they sit on their catches all night, and in the morning they find a Giraffe now covered in blotches and a Zebra now covered in stripes. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/1/) — The Zebra and the Giraffe show off their trick: they step into the striped and blotchy shadows, count "One--two--three!", and vanish, laughing "where's your breakfast?" - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/2/) — The two hunters see they no longer match their background, and at last the Leopard understands Baviaan's riddle: not other spots in South Africa, but spots on his skin. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/3/) — The hunter presses his five fingertips all over the Leopard, leaving little marks in groups, and now the Leopard can look like pebbles, rocks or sunlight through leaves; the old saying "Can the leopard change his spots?" comes from here, says Kipling. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/4/) — Parts of this story use old words and ideas about people that are racist and wrong; we leave those out and read the animal story, which is about camouflage, matching where you live. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/5/) — The Leopard grumbled, "This daylight hunting is a perfect scandal", so they "waited till dark", and the Leopard jumped at something that "smelt like Zebra, and it felt like Zebra, and when he knocked it down it kicked like Zebra, but he couldn't see it". - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/6/) — He called it "O you person without any form" (without a shape you can see) and sat on its head till morning; the hunter did the same with something that kicked "like Giraffe". - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/7/) — At "bright morning-time" the Leopard asked, "What have you at your end of the table, Brother?", joking that their catches were their breakfast. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/8/) — The Giraffe was "covered all over with chestnut blotches" and the Zebra "covered all over with black and purple stripes"; "fulvous" and "tawny" are old words for a golden yellow-brown. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/9/) — The Leopard says, "if you were on the High Veldt I could see you ten miles off", and the Zebra answers, "but this isn't the High Veldt. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/10/) — Can't you see?" - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/11/) — The Zebra went to "little thorn-bushes where the sunlight fell all stripy", the Giraffe to "tallish trees where the shadows fell all blotchy", and they said "One--two--three! - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/12/) — And where's your breakfast?" - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/13/) — The hunter sums it up: "The long and the little of it is that we don't match our backgrounds" ("the long and the little of it" = the whole truth in short). - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/14/) — Parts of this story use old words and ideas about people that are racist and wrong; we do not repeat them. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/15/) — The Leopard thought Baviaan meant places: "I went into other spots as fast as I could ... and a lot of good it has done me", but the hunter explains, "He meant spots on your skin." - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/16/) — The Leopard did not want stripes ("I wouldn't look like Zebra--not for ever so") nor spots too "vulgar-big" ("I wouldn't look like Giraffe"); "not for ever so" = not for anything. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/17/) — The hunter "put his five fingers close together" and pressed them all over the Leopard, and "wherever the five fingers touched they left five little black marks, all close together". - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/18/) — "Now you are a beauty!": on bare ground the Leopard can "look like a heap of pebbles", on naked rocks "a piece of pudding-stone" (a rock full of round pebbles), on a leafy branch "sunshine sifting through the leaves", and right across the middle of a path "nothing in particular. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/19/) — Think of that and purr!" - [20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/20/) — The old saying "a leopard cannot change its spots" means that people do not change what they are really like; Kipling jokes that it only exists because the Leopard did it once. - [21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/21/) — Real biology: a leopard's markings are "rosettes", rose-shaped rings of dark spots with a lighter middle; they are not prints of five fingers, and they are in the leopard's genes from birth. - [22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/22/) — Real biology: every leopard has its own pattern, like a fingerprint, so scientists can tell leopards apart on hidden cameras; even black leopards ("black panthers") have faint rosettes. - [23](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/23/) — Real biology: leopards hunt mostly at night by creeping close and pouncing, and often drag their prey up a tree; scientists still argue why zebras have stripes, and a strong idea is that stripes keep biting flies from landing. - ← previous: [Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 4: How the Leopard got his Spots, part 1 (the game goes into the forest)](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/77-justso-leopard-spots-1/) - next →: [Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 5: The Elephant's Child, part 1 (What does the Crocodile have for dinner?)](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/) - ↑ back to [Books](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/)