They were very fond of music , but it was too much trouble to learn the piano or the violin ; and as for dancing , that would have been too great an exertion . So they sat on ant-hills all day long , and played on the Jews ' harp ; and , if the ants bit them , why they just got up and went to the next ant-hill , till they were bitten there likewise . And they sat under the flapdoodle-trees , and let the flapdoodle drop into their mouths ; and under the vines , and squeezed the grape-juice down their throats ; and , if any little pigs ran about ready roasted , crying , `` Come and eat me , '' as was their fashion in that country , they waited till the pigs ran against their mouths , and then took a bite , and were content , just as so many oysters would have been . They needed no weapons , for no enemies ever came near their land ; and no tools , for everything was readymade to their hand ; and the stern old fairy Necessity never came near them to hunt them up , and make them use their wits , or die . And so on , and so on , and so on , till there were never such comfortable , easy-going , happy-go-lucky people in the world . `` Well , that is a jolly life , '' said Tom . `` You think so ? '' said the fairy . `` Do you see that great peaked mountain there behind , '' said the fairy , `` with smoke coming out of its top ? '' `` Yes . '' `` And do you see all those ashes , and slag , and cinders lying about ? '' `` Yes . '' `` Then turn over the next five hundred years , and you will see what happens next . '' And behold the mountain had blown up like a barrel of gunpowder , and then boiled over like a kettle ; whereby one-third of the Doasyoulikes were blown into the air , and another third were smothered in ashes ; so that there was only one-third left . `` You see , '' said the fairy , `` what comes of living on a burning mountain . '' `` Oh , why did you not warn them ? '' said little Ellie . `` I did warn them all that I could . I let the smoke come out of the mountain ; and wherever there is smoke there is fire . And I laid the ashes and cinders all about ; and wherever there are cinders , cinders may be again .
But they did not like XXXXX face facts , my dears , as very few people do ; and so they invented a cock-and-bull story , which , I am sure , I never told them , that the smoke was the breath of a giant , whom some gods or other had buried under the mountain ; and that the cinders were what the dwarfs roasted the little pigs whole with ; and other nonsense of that kind .
about against as for if in like of till to