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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 289 ***
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+The Wind in the Willows
+
+by Kenneth Grahame
+
+Author Of “The Golden Age,” “Dream Days,” Etc.
+
+
+Contents
+
+ CHAPTER I. THE RIVER BANK
+ CHAPTER II. THE OPEN ROAD
+ CHAPTER III. THE WILD WOOD
+ CHAPTER IV. MR. BADGER
+ CHAPTER V. DULCE DOMUM
+ CHAPTER VI. MR. TOAD
+ CHAPTER VII. THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN
+ CHAPTER VIII. TOAD’S ADVENTURES
+ CHAPTER IX. WAYFARERS ALL
+ CHAPTER X. THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF TOAD
+ CHAPTER XI. “LIKE SUMMER TEMPESTS CAME HIS TEARS”
+ CHAPTER XII. THE RETURN OF ULYSSES
+
+
+
+
+I.
+THE RIVER BANK
+
+
+The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning
+his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders
+and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had
+dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his
+black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the
+air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his
+dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and
+longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his
+brush on the floor, said “Bother!” and “O blow!” and also “Hang
+spring-cleaning!” and bolted out of the house without even waiting to
+put on his coat. Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he
+made for the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to the
+gravelled carriage-drive owned by animals whose residences are nearer
+to the sun and air. So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and
+scrooged and then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and
+scraped, working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself,
+“Up we go! Up we go!” till at last, pop! his snout came out into the
+sunlight, and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great
+meadow.
+
+“This is fine!” he said to himself. “This is better than whitewashing!”
+The sunshine struck hot on his fur, soft breezes caressed his heated
+brow, and after the seclusion of the cellarage he had lived in so long
+the carol of happy birds fell on his dulled hearing almost like a
+shout. Jumping off all his four legs at once, in the joy of living and
+the delight of spring without its cleaning, he pursued his way across
+the meadow till he reached the hedge on the further side.
+
+“Hold up!” said an elderly rabbit at the gap. “Sixpence for the
+privilege of passing by the private road!” He was bowled over in an
+instant by the impatient and contemptuous Mole, who trotted along the
+side of the hedge chaffing the other rabbits as they peeped hurriedly
+from their holes to see what the row was about. “Onion-sauce!
+Onion-sauce!” he remarked jeeringly, and was gone before they could
+think of a thoroughly satisfactory reply. Then they all started
+grumbling at each other. “How _stupid_ you are! Why didn’t you tell
+him——” “Well, why didn’t _you_ say——” “You might have reminded him——”
+and so on, in the usual way; but, of course, it was then much too late,
+as is always the case.
+
+It all seemed too good to be true. Hither and thither through the
+meadows he rambled busily, along the hedgerows, across the copses,
+finding everywhere birds building, flowers budding, leaves
+thrusting—everything happy, and progressive, and occupied. And instead
+of having an uneasy conscience pricking him and whispering “whitewash!”
+he somehow could only feel how jolly it was to be the only idle dog
+among all these busy citizens. After all, the best part of a holiday is
+perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other
+fellows busy working.
+
+He thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly
+along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his
+life had he seen a river before—this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied
+animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and
+leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that
+shook themselves free, and were caught and held again. All was a-shake
+and a-shiver—glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter
+and bubble. The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side
+of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a
+man who holds one spell-bound by exciting stories; and when tired at
+last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a
+babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the
+heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.
+
+As he sat on the grass and looked across the river, a dark hole in the
+bank opposite, just above the water’s edge, caught his eye, and
+dreamily he fell to considering what a nice snug dwelling-place it
+would make for an animal with few wants and fond of a bijou riverside
+residence, above flood level and remote from noise and dust. As he
+gazed, something bright and small seemed to twinkle down in the heart
+of it, vanished, then twinkled once more like a tiny star. But it could
+hardly be a star in such an unlikely situation; and it was too
+glittering and small for a glow-worm. Then, as he looked, it winked at
+him, and so declared itself to be an eye; and a small face began
+gradually to grow up round it, like a frame round a picture.
+
+A brown little face, with whiskers.
+
+A grave round face, with the same twinkle in its eye that had first
+attracted his notice.
+
+Small neat ears and thick silky hair.
+
+It was the Water Rat!
+
+Then the two animals stood and regarded each other cautiously.
+
+“Hullo, Mole!” said the Water Rat.
+
+“Hullo, Rat!” said the Mole.
+
+“Would you like to come over?” enquired the Rat presently.
+
+“Oh, its all very well to _talk_,” said the Mole, rather pettishly, he
+being new to a river and riverside life and its ways.
+
+The Rat said nothing, but stooped and unfastened a rope and hauled on
+it; then lightly stepped into a little boat which the Mole had not
+observed. It was painted blue outside and white within, and was just
+the size for two animals; and the Mole’s whole heart went out to it at
+once, even though he did not yet fully understand its uses.
+
+The Rat sculled smartly across and made fast. Then he held up his
+forepaw as the Mole stepped gingerly down. “Lean on that!” he said.
+“Now then, step lively!” and the Mole to his surprise and rapture found
+himself actually seated in the stern of a real boat.
+
+“This has been a wonderful day!” said he, as the Rat shoved off and
+took to the sculls again. “Do you know, I’ve never been in a boat
+before in all my life.”
+
+“What?” cried the Rat, open-mouthed: “Never been in a—you never—well
+I—what have you been doing, then?”
+
+“Is it so nice as all that?” asked the Mole shyly, though he was quite
+prepared to believe it as he leant back in his seat and surveyed the
+cushions, the oars, the rowlocks, and all the fascinating fittings, and
+felt the boat sway lightly under him.
+
+“Nice? It’s the _only_ thing,” said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leant
+forward for his stroke. “Believe me, my young friend, there is
+_nothing_—absolute nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing
+about in boats. Simply messing,” he went on dreamily:
+“messing—about—in—boats; messing——”
+
+“Look ahead, Rat!” cried the Mole suddenly.
+
+It was too late. The boat struck the bank full tilt. The dreamer, the
+joyous oarsman, lay on his back at the bottom of the boat, his heels in
+the air.
+
+“—about in boats—or _with_ boats,” the Rat went on composedly, picking
+himself up with a pleasant laugh. “In or out of ’em, it doesn’t matter.
+Nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get
+away, or whether you don’t; whether you arrive at your destination or
+whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at
+all, you’re always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and
+when you’ve done it there’s always something else to do, and you can do
+it if you like, but you’d much better not. Look here! If you’ve really
+nothing else on hand this morning, supposing we drop down the river
+together, and have a long day of it?”
+
+The Mole waggled his toes from sheer happiness, spread his chest with a
+sigh of full contentment, and leaned back blissfully into the soft
+cushions. “_What_ a day I’m having!” he said. “Let us start at once!”
+
+“Hold hard a minute, then!” said the Rat. He looped the painter through
+a ring in his landing-stage, climbed up into his hole above, and after
+a short interval reappeared staggering under a fat, wicker
+luncheon-basket.
+
+“Shove that under your feet,” he observed to the Mole, as he passed it
+down into the boat. Then he untied the painter and took the sculls
+again.
+
+“What’s inside it?” asked the Mole, wriggling with curiosity.
+
+“There’s cold chicken inside it,” replied the Rat briefly; “
+coldtonguecoldhamcoldbeefpickledgherkinssaladfrenchrollscresssandwiches
+pottedme atgingerbeerlemonadesodawater——”
+
+“O stop, stop,” cried the Mole in ecstacies: “This is too much!”
+
+“Do you really think so?” enquired the Rat seriously. “It’s only what I
+always take on these little excursions; and the other animals are
+always telling me that I’m a mean beast and cut it _very_ fine!”
+
+The Mole never heard a word he was saying. Absorbed in the new life he
+was entering upon, intoxicated with the sparkle, the ripple, the scents
+and the sounds and the sunlight, he trailed a paw in the water and
+dreamed long waking dreams. The Water Rat, like the good little fellow
+he was, sculled steadily on and forebore to disturb him.
+
+“I like your clothes awfully, old chap,” he remarked after some half an
+hour or so had passed. “I’m going to get a black velvet smoking-suit
+myself some day, as soon as I can afford it.”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said the Mole, pulling himself together with an
+effort. “You must think me very rude; but all this is so new to me.
+So—this—is—a—River!”
+
+“_The_ River,” corrected the Rat.
+
+“And you really live by the river? What a jolly life!”
+
+“By it and with it and on it and in it,” said the Rat. “It’s brother
+and sister to me, and aunts, and company, and food and drink, and
+(naturally) washing. It’s my world, and I don’t want any other. What it
+hasn’t got is not worth having, and what it doesn’t know is not worth
+knowing. Lord! the times we’ve had together! Whether in winter or
+summer, spring or autumn, it’s always got its fun and its excitements.
+When the floods are on in February, and my cellars and basement are
+brimming with drink that’s no good to me, and the brown water runs by
+my best bedroom window; or again when it all drops away and, shows
+patches of mud that smells like plum-cake, and the rushes and weed clog
+the channels, and I can potter about dry shod over most of the bed of
+it and find fresh food to eat, and things careless people have dropped
+out of boats!”
+
+“But isn’t it a bit dull at times?” the Mole ventured to ask. “Just you
+and the river, and no one else to pass a word with?”
+
+“No one else to—well, I mustn’t be hard on you,” said the Rat with
+forbearance. “You’re new to it, and of course you don’t know. The bank
+is so crowded nowadays that many people are moving away altogether: O
+no, it isn’t what it used to be, at all. Otters, kingfishers,
+dabchicks, moorhens, all of them about all day long and always wanting
+you to _do_ something—as if a fellow had no business of his own to
+attend to!”
+
+“What lies over _there?_” asked the Mole, waving a paw towards a
+background of woodland that darkly framed the water-meadows on one side
+of the river.
+
+“That? O, that’s just the Wild Wood,” said the Rat shortly. “We don’t
+go there very much, we river-bankers.”
+
+“Aren’t they—aren’t they very _nice_ people in there?” said the Mole, a
+trifle nervously.
+
+“W-e-ll,” replied the Rat, “let me see. The squirrels are all right.
+_And_ the rabbits—some of ’em, but rabbits are a mixed lot. And then
+there’s Badger, of course. He lives right in the heart of it; wouldn’t
+live anywhere else, either, if you paid him to do it. Dear old Badger!
+Nobody interferes with _him_. They’d better not,” he added
+significantly.
+
+“Why, who _should_ interfere with him?” asked the Mole.
+
+“Well, of course—there—are others,” explained the Rat in a hesitating
+sort of way.
+
+“Weasels—and stoats—and foxes—and so on. They’re all right in a way—I’m
+very good friends with them—pass the time of day when we meet, and all
+that—but they break out sometimes, there’s no denying it, and
+then—well, you can’t really trust them, and that’s the fact.”
+
+The Mole knew well that it is quite against animal-etiquette to dwell
+on possible trouble ahead, or even to allude to it; so he dropped the
+subject.
+
+“And beyond the Wild Wood again?” he asked: “Where it’s all blue and
+dim, and one sees what may be hills or perhaps they mayn’t, and
+something like the smoke of towns, or is it only cloud-drift?”
+
+“Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World,” said the Rat. “And that’s
+something that doesn’t matter, either to you or me. I’ve never been
+there, and I’m never going, nor you either, if you’ve got any sense at
+all. Don’t ever refer to it again, please. Now then! Here’s our
+backwater at last, where we’re going to lunch.”
+
+Leaving the main stream, they now passed into what seemed at first
+sight like a little land-locked lake. Green turf sloped down to either
+edge, brown snaky tree-roots gleamed below the surface of the quiet
+water, while ahead of them the silvery shoulder and foamy tumble of a
+weir, arm-in-arm with a restless dripping mill-wheel, that held up in
+its turn a grey-gabled mill-house, filled the air with a soothing
+murmur of sound, dull and smothery, yet with little clear voices
+speaking up cheerfully out of it at intervals. It was so very beautiful
+that the Mole could only hold up both forepaws and gasp, “O my! O my! O
+my!”
+
+The Rat brought the boat alongside the bank, made her fast, helped the
+still awkward Mole safely ashore, and swung out the luncheon-basket.
+The Mole begged as a favour to be allowed to unpack it all by himself;
+and the Rat was very pleased to indulge him, and to sprawl at full
+length on the grass and rest, while his excited friend shook out the
+table-cloth and spread it, took out all the mysterious packets one by
+one and arranged their contents in due order, still gasping, “O my! O
+my!” at each fresh revelation. When all was ready, the Rat said, “Now,
+pitch in, old fellow!” and the Mole was indeed very glad to obey, for
+he had started his spring-cleaning at a very early hour that morning,
+as people _will_ do, and had not paused for bite or sup; and he had
+been through a very great deal since that distant time which now seemed
+so many days ago.
+
+“What are you looking at?” said the Rat presently, when the edge of
+their hunger was somewhat dulled, and the Mole’s eyes were able to
+wander off the table-cloth a little.
+
+“I am looking,” said the Mole, “at a streak of bubbles that I see
+travelling along the surface of the water. That is a thing that strikes
+me as funny.”
+
+“Bubbles? Oho!” said the Rat, and chirruped cheerily in an inviting
+sort of way.
+
+A broad glistening muzzle showed itself above the edge of the bank, and
+the Otter hauled himself out and shook the water from his coat.
+
+“Greedy beggars!” he observed, making for the provender. “Why didn’t
+you invite me, Ratty?”
+
+“This was an impromptu affair,” explained the Rat. “By the way—my
+friend Mr. Mole.”
+
+“Proud, I’m sure,” said the Otter, and the two animals were friends
+forthwith.
+
+“Such a rumpus everywhere!” continued the Otter. “All the world seems
+out on the river to-day. I came up this backwater to try and get a
+moment’s peace, and then stumble upon you fellows!—At least—I beg
+pardon—I don’t exactly mean that, you know.”
+
+There was a rustle behind them, proceeding from a hedge wherein last
+year’s leaves still clung thick, and a stripy head, with high shoulders
+behind it, peered forth on them.
+
+“Come on, old Badger!” shouted the Rat.
+
+The Badger trotted forward a pace or two; then grunted, “H’m! Company,”
+and turned his back and disappeared from view.
+
+“That’s _just_ the sort of fellow he is!” observed the disappointed
+Rat. “Simply hates Society! Now we shan’t see any more of him to-day.
+Well, tell us, _who’s_ out on the river?”
+
+“Toad’s out, for one,” replied the Otter. “In his brand-new wager-boat;
+new togs, new everything!”
+
+The two animals looked at each other and laughed.
+
+“Once, it was nothing but sailing,” said the Rat, “Then he tired of
+that and took to punting. Nothing would please him but to punt all day
+and every day, and a nice mess he made of it. Last year it was
+house-boating, and we all had to go and stay with him in his
+house-boat, and pretend we liked it. He was going to spend the rest of
+his life in a house-boat. It’s all the same, whatever he takes up; he
+gets tired of it, and starts on something fresh.”
+
+“Such a good fellow, too,” remarked the Otter reflectively: “But no
+stability—especially in a boat!”
+
+From where they sat they could get a glimpse of the main stream across
+the island that separated them; and just then a wager-boat flashed into
+view, the rower—a short, stout figure—splashing badly and rolling a
+good deal, but working his hardest. The Rat stood up and hailed him,
+but Toad—for it was he—shook his head and settled sternly to his work.
+
+“He’ll be out of the boat in a minute if he rolls like that,” said the
+Rat, sitting down again.
+
+“Of course he will,” chuckled the Otter. “Did I ever tell you that good
+story about Toad and the lock-keeper? It happened this way. Toad....”
+
+An errant May-fly swerved unsteadily athwart the current in the
+intoxicated fashion affected by young bloods of May-flies seeing life.
+A swirl of water and a “cloop!” and the May-fly was visible no more.
+
+Neither was the Otter.
+
+The Mole looked down. The voice was still in his ears, but the turf
+whereon he had sprawled was clearly vacant. Not an Otter to be seen, as
+far as the distant horizon.
+
+But again there was a streak of bubbles on the surface of the river.
+
+The Rat hummed a tune, and the Mole recollected that animal-etiquette
+forbade any sort of comment on the sudden disappearance of one’s
+friends at any moment, for any reason or no reason whatever.
+
+“Well, well,” said the Rat, “I suppose we ought to be moving. I wonder
+which of us had better pack the luncheon-basket?” He did not speak as
+if he was frightfully eager for the treat.
+
+“O, please let me,” said the Mole. So, of course, the Rat let him.
+
+Packing the basket was not quite such pleasant work as unpacking the
+basket. It never is. But the Mole was bent on enjoying everything, and
+although just when he had got the basket packed and strapped up tightly
+he saw a plate staring up at him from the grass, and when the job had
+been done again the Rat pointed out a fork which anybody ought to have
+seen, and last of all, behold! the mustard pot, which he had been
+sitting on without knowing it—still, somehow, the thing got finished at
+last, without much loss of temper.
+
+The afternoon sun was getting low as the Rat sculled gently homewards
+in a dreamy mood, murmuring poetry-things over to himself, and not
+paying much attention to Mole. But the Mole was very full of lunch, and
+self-satisfaction, and pride, and already quite at home in a boat (so
+he thought) and was getting a bit restless besides: and presently he
+said, “Ratty! Please, _I_ want to row, now!”
+
+The Rat shook his head with a smile. “Not yet, my young friend,” he
+said—“wait till you’ve had a few lessons. It’s not so easy as it
+looks.”
+
+The Mole was quiet for a minute or two. But he began to feel more and
+more jealous of Rat, sculling so strongly and so easily along, and his
+pride began to whisper that he could do it every bit as well. He jumped
+up and seized the sculls, so suddenly, that the Rat, who was gazing out
+over the water and saying more poetry-things to himself, was taken by
+surprise and fell backwards off his seat with his legs in the air for
+the second time, while the triumphant Mole took his place and grabbed
+the sculls with entire confidence.
+
+“Stop it, you _silly_ ass!” cried the Rat, from the bottom of the boat.
+“You can’t do it! You’ll have us over!”
+
+The Mole flung his sculls back with a flourish, and made a great dig at
+the water. He missed the surface altogether, his legs flew up above his
+head, and he found himself lying on the top of the prostrate Rat.
+Greatly alarmed, he made a grab at the side of the boat, and the next
+moment—Sploosh!
+
+Over went the boat, and he found himself struggling in the river.
+
+O my, how cold the water was, and O, how _very_ wet it felt. How it
+sang in his ears as he went down, down, down! How bright and welcome
+the sun looked as he rose to the surface coughing and spluttering! How
+black was his despair when he felt himself sinking again! Then a firm
+paw gripped him by the back of his neck. It was the Rat, and he was
+evidently laughing—the Mole could _feel_ him laughing, right down his
+arm and through his paw, and so into his—the Mole’s—neck.
+
+The Rat got hold of a scull and shoved it under the Mole’s arm; then he
+did the same by the other side of him and, swimming behind, propelled
+the helpless animal to shore, hauled him out, and set him down on the
+bank, a squashy, pulpy lump of misery.
+
+When the Rat had rubbed him down a bit, and wrung some of the wet out
+of him, he said, “Now, then, old fellow! Trot up and down the
+towing-path as hard as you can, till you’re warm and dry again, while I
+dive for the luncheon-basket.”
+
+So the dismal Mole, wet without and ashamed within, trotted about till
+he was fairly dry, while the Rat plunged into the water again,
+recovered the boat, righted her and made her fast, fetched his floating
+property to shore by degrees, and finally dived successfully for the
+luncheon-basket and struggled to land with it.
+
+When all was ready for a start once more, the Mole, limp and dejected,
+took his seat in the stern of the boat; and as they set off, he said in
+a low voice, broken with emotion, “Ratty, my generous friend! I am very
+sorry indeed for my foolish and ungrateful conduct. My heart quite
+fails me when I think how I might have lost that beautiful
+luncheon-basket. Indeed, I have been a complete ass, and I know it.
+Will you overlook it this once and forgive me, and let things go on as
+before?”
+
+“That’s all right, bless you!” responded the Rat cheerily. “What’s a
+little wet to a Water Rat? I’m more in the water than out of it most
+days. Don’t you think any more about it; and, look here! I really think
+you had better come and stop with me for a little time. It’s very plain
+and rough, you know—not like Toad’s house at all—but you haven’t seen
+that yet; still, I can make you comfortable. And I’ll teach you to row,
+and to swim, and you’ll soon be as handy on the water as any of us.”
+
+The Mole was so touched by his kind manner of speaking that he could
+find no voice to answer him; and he had to brush away a tear or two
+with the back of his paw. But the Rat kindly looked in another
+direction, and presently the Mole’s spirits revived again, and he was
+even able to give some straight back-talk to a couple of moorhens who
+were sniggering to each other about his bedraggled appearance.
+
+When they got home, the Rat made a bright fire in the parlour, and
+planted the Mole in an arm-chair in front of it, having fetched down a
+dressing-gown and slippers for him, and told him river stories till
+supper-time. Very thrilling stories they were, too, to an
+earth-dwelling animal like Mole. Stories about weirs, and sudden
+floods, and leaping pike, and steamers that flung hard bottles—at least
+bottles were certainly flung, and _from_ steamers, so presumably _by_
+them; and about herons, and how particular they were whom they spoke
+to; and about adventures down drains, and night-fishings with Otter, or
+excursions far a-field with Badger. Supper was a most cheerful meal;
+but very shortly afterwards a terribly sleepy Mole had to be escorted
+upstairs by his considerate host, to the best bedroom, where he soon
+laid his head on his pillow in great peace and contentment, knowing
+that his new-found friend the River was lapping the sill of his window.
+
+This day was only the first of many similar ones for the emancipated
+Mole, each of them longer and full of interest as the ripening summer
+moved onward. He learnt to swim and to row, and entered into the joy of
+running water; and with his ear to the reed-stems he caught, at
+intervals, something of what the wind went whispering so constantly
+among them.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+THE OPEN ROAD
+
+
+“Ratty,” said the Mole suddenly, one bright summer morning, “if you
+please, I want to ask you a favour.”
+
+The Rat was sitting on the river bank, singing a little song. He had
+just composed it himself, so he was very taken up with it, and would
+not pay proper attention to Mole or anything else. Since early morning
+he had been swimming in the river, in company with his friends the
+ducks. And when the ducks stood on their heads suddenly, as ducks will,
+he would dive down and tickle their necks, just under where their chins
+would be if ducks had chins, till they were forced to come to the
+surface again in a hurry, spluttering and angry and shaking their
+feathers at him, for it is impossible to say quite _all_ you feel when
+your head is under water. At last they implored him to go away and
+attend to his own affairs and leave them to mind theirs. So the Rat
+went away, and sat on the river bank in the sun, and made up a song
+about them, which he called
+
+“DUCKS’ DITTY.”
+
+All along the backwater,
+Through the rushes tall,
+Ducks are a-dabbling,
+Up tails all!
+Ducks’ tails, drakes’ tails,
+Yellow feet a-quiver,
+Yellow bills all out of sight
+Busy in the river!
+
+Slushy green undergrowth
+Where the roach swim—
+Here we keep our larder,
+Cool and full and dim.
+
+Everyone for what he likes!
+_We_ like to be
+Heads down, tails up,
+Dabbling free!
+
+High in the blue above
+Swifts whirl and call—
+_We_ are down a-dabbling
+Uptails all!
+
+
+“I don’t know that I think so _very_ much of that little song, Rat,”
+observed the Mole cautiously. He was no poet himself and didn’t care
+who knew it; and he had a candid nature.
+
+“Nor don’t the ducks neither,” replied the Rat cheerfully. “They say,
+‘_Why_ can’t fellows be allowed to do what they like _when_ they like
+and _as_ they like, instead of other fellows sitting on banks and
+watching them all the time and making remarks and poetry and things
+about them? What _nonsense_ it all is!’ That’s what the ducks say.”
+
+“So it is, so it is,” said the Mole, with great heartiness.
+
+“No, it isn’t!” cried the Rat indignantly.
+
+“Well then, it isn’t, it isn’t,” replied the Mole soothingly. “But what
+I wanted to ask you was, won’t you take me to call on Mr. Toad? I’ve
+heard so much about him, and I do so want to make his acquaintance.”
+
+“Why, certainly,” said the good-natured Rat, jumping to his feet and
+dismissing poetry from his mind for the day. “Get the boat out, and
+we’ll paddle up there at once. It’s never the wrong time to call on
+Toad. Early or late he’s always the same fellow. Always good-tempered,
+always glad to see you, always sorry when you go!”
+
+“He must be a very nice animal,” observed the Mole, as he got into the
+boat and took the sculls, while the Rat settled himself comfortably in
+the stern.
+
+“He is indeed the best of animals,” replied Rat. “So simple, so
+good-natured, and so affectionate. Perhaps he’s not very clever—we
+can’t all be geniuses; and it may be that he is both boastful and
+conceited. But he has got some great qualities, has Toady.”
+
+Rounding a bend in the river, they came in sight of a handsome,
+dignified old house of mellowed red brick, with well-kept lawns
+reaching down to the water’s edge.
+
+“There’s Toad Hall,” said the Rat; “and that creek on the left, where
+the notice-board says, ‘Private. No landing allowed,’ leads to his
+boat-house, where we’ll leave the boat. The stables are over there to
+the right. That’s the banqueting-hall you’re looking at now—very old,
+that is. Toad is rather rich, you know, and this is really one of the
+nicest houses in these parts, though we never admit as much to Toad.”
+
+They glided up the creek, and the Mole shipped his sculls as they
+passed into the shadow of a large boat-house. Here they saw many
+handsome boats, slung from the cross beams or hauled up on a slip, but
+none in the water; and the place had an unused and a deserted air.
+
+The Rat looked around him. “I understand,” said he. “Boating is played
+out. He’s tired of it, and done with it. I wonder what new fad he has
+taken up now? Come along and let’s look him up. We shall hear all about
+it quite soon enough.”
+
+They disembarked, and strolled across the gay flower-decked lawns in
+search of Toad, whom they presently happened upon resting in a wicker
+garden-chair, with a pre-occupied expression of face, and a large map
+spread out on his knees.
+
+“Hooray!” he cried, jumping up on seeing them, “this is splendid!” He
+shook the paws of both of them warmly, never waiting for an
+introduction to the Mole. “How _kind_ of you!” he went on, dancing
+round them. “I was just going to send a boat down the river for you,
+Ratty, with strict orders that you were to be fetched up here at once,
+whatever you were doing. I want you badly—both of you. Now what will
+you take? Come inside and have something! You don’t know how lucky it
+is, your turning up just now!”
+
+“Let’s sit quiet a bit, Toady!” said the Rat, throwing himself into an
+easy chair, while the Mole took another by the side of him and made
+some civil remark about Toad’s “delightful residence.”
+
+“Finest house on the whole river,” cried Toad boisterously. “Or
+anywhere else, for that matter,” he could not help adding.
+
+Here the Rat nudged the Mole. Unfortunately the Toad saw him do it, and
+turned very red. There was a moment’s painful silence. Then Toad burst
+out laughing. “All right, Ratty,” he said. “It’s only my way, you know.
+And it’s not such a very bad house, is it? You know you rather like it
+yourself. Now, look here. Let’s be sensible. You are the very animals I
+wanted. You’ve got to help me. It’s most important!”
+
+“It’s about your rowing, I suppose,” said the Rat, with an innocent
+air. “You’re getting on fairly well, though you splash a good bit
+still. With a great deal of patience, and any quantity of coaching, you
+may——”
+
+“O, pooh! boating!” interrupted the Toad, in great disgust. “Silly
+boyish amusement. I’ve given that up _long_ ago. Sheer waste of time,
+that’s what it is. It makes me downright sorry to see you fellows, who
+ought to know better, spending all your energies in that aimless
+manner. No, I’ve discovered the real thing, the only genuine occupation
+for a life time. I propose to devote the remainder of mine to it, and
+can only regret the wasted years that lie behind me, squandered in
+trivialities. Come with me, dear Ratty, and your amiable friend also,
+if he will be so very good, just as far as the stable-yard, and you
+shall see what you shall see!”
+
+He led the way to the stable-yard accordingly, the Rat following with a
+most mistrustful expression; and there, drawn out of the coach house
+into the open, they saw a gipsy caravan, shining with newness, painted
+a canary-yellow picked out with green, and red wheels.
+
+“There you are!” cried the Toad, straddling and expanding himself.
+“There’s real life for you, embodied in that little cart. The open
+road, the dusty highway, the heath, the common, the hedgerows, the
+rolling downs! Camps, villages, towns, cities! Here to-day, up and off
+to somewhere else to-morrow! Travel, change, interest, excitement! The
+whole world before you, and a horizon that’s always changing! And mind!
+this is the very finest cart of its sort that was ever built, without
+any exception. Come inside and look at the arrangements. Planned ’em
+all myself, I did!”
+
+The Mole was tremendously interested and excited, and followed him
+eagerly up the steps and into the interior of the caravan. The Rat only
+snorted and thrust his hands deep into his pockets, remaining where he
+was.
+
+It was indeed very compact and comfortable. Little sleeping bunks—a
+little table that folded up against the wall—a cooking-stove, lockers,
+bookshelves, a bird-cage with a bird in it; and pots, pans, jugs and
+kettles of every size and variety.
+
+“All complete!” said the Toad triumphantly, pulling open a locker. “You
+see—biscuits, potted lobster, sardines—everything you can possibly
+want. Soda-water here—baccy there—letter-paper, bacon, jam, cards and
+dominoes—you’ll find,” he continued, as they descended the steps again,
+“you’ll find that nothing what ever has been forgotten, when we make
+our start this afternoon.”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said the Rat slowly, as he chewed a straw, “but
+did I overhear you say something about ‘_we_,’ and ‘_start_,’ and
+‘_this afternoon?_’”
+
+“Now, you dear good old Ratty,” said Toad, imploringly, “don’t begin
+talking in that stiff and sniffy sort of way, because you know you’ve
+_got_ to come. I can’t possibly manage without you, so please consider
+it settled, and don’t argue—it’s the one thing I can’t stand. You
+surely don’t mean to stick to your dull fusty old river all your life,
+and just live in a hole in a bank, and _boat?_ I want to show you the
+world! I’m going to make an _animal_ of you, my boy!”
+
+“I don’t care,” said the Rat, doggedly. “I’m not coming, and that’s
+flat. And I _am_ going to stick to my old river, _and_ live in a hole,
+_and_ boat, as I’ve always done. And what’s more, Mole’s going to stick
+to me and do as I do, aren’t you, Mole?”
+
+“Of course I am,” said the Mole, loyally. “I’ll always stick to you,
+Rat, and what you say is to be—has got to be. All the same, it sounds
+as if it might have been—well, rather fun, you know!” he added,
+wistfully. Poor Mole! The Life Adventurous was so new a thing to him,
+and so thrilling; and this fresh aspect of it was so tempting; and he
+had fallen in love at first sight with the canary-coloured cart and all
+its little fitments.
+
+The Rat saw what was passing in his mind, and wavered. He hated
+disappointing people, and he was fond of the Mole, and would do almost
+anything to oblige him. Toad was watching both of them closely.
+
+“Come along in, and have some lunch,” he said, diplomatically, “and
+we’ll talk it over. We needn’t decide anything in a hurry. Of course,
+_I_ don’t really care. I only want to give pleasure to you fellows.
+‘Live for others!’ That’s my motto in life.”
+
+During luncheon—which was excellent, of course, as everything at Toad
+Hall always was—the Toad simply let himself go. Disregarding the Rat,
+he proceeded to play upon the inexperienced Mole as on a harp.
+Naturally a voluble animal, and always mastered by his imagination, he
+painted the prospects of the trip and the joys of the open life and the
+roadside in such glowing colours that the Mole could hardly sit in his
+chair for excitement. Somehow, it soon seemed taken for granted by all
+three of them that the trip was a settled thing; and the Rat, though
+still unconvinced in his mind, allowed his good-nature to over-ride his
+personal objections. He could not bear to disappoint his two friends,
+who were already deep in schemes and anticipations, planning out each
+day’s separate occupation for several weeks ahead.
+
+When they were quite ready, the now triumphant Toad led his companions
+to the paddock and set them to capture the old grey horse, who, without
+having been consulted, and to his own extreme annoyance, had been told
+off by Toad for the dustiest job in this dusty expedition. He frankly
+preferred the paddock, and took a deal of catching. Meantime Toad
+packed the lockers still tighter with necessaries, and hung nosebags,
+nets of onions, bundles of hay, and baskets from the bottom of the
+cart. At last the horse was caught and harnessed, and they set off, all
+talking at once, each animal either trudging by the side of the cart or
+sitting on the shaft, as the humour took him. It was a golden
+afternoon. The smell of the dust they kicked up was rich and
+satisfying; out of thick orchards on either side the road, birds called
+and whistled to them cheerily; good-natured wayfarers, passing them,
+gave them “Good-day,” or stopped to say nice things about their
+beautiful cart; and rabbits, sitting at their front doors in the
+hedgerows, held up their fore-paws, and said, “O my! O my! O my!”
+
+Late in the evening, tired and happy and miles from home, they drew up
+on a remote common far from habitations, turned the horse loose to
+graze, and ate their simple supper sitting on the grass by the side of
+the cart. Toad talked big about all he was going to do in the days to
+come, while stars grew fuller and larger all around them, and a yellow
+moon, appearing suddenly and silently from nowhere in particular, came
+to keep them company and listen to their talk. At last they turned in
+to their little bunks in the cart; and Toad, kicking out his legs,
+sleepily said, “Well, good night, you fellows! This is the real life
+for a gentleman! Talk about your old river!”
+
+“I _don’t_ talk about my river,” replied the patient Rat. “You _know_ I
+don’t, Toad. But I _think_ about it,” he added pathetically, in a lower
+tone: “I think about it—all the time!”
+
+The Mole reached out from under his blanket, felt for the Rat’s paw in
+the darkness, and gave it a squeeze. “I’ll do whatever you like,
+Ratty,” he whispered. “Shall we run away to-morrow morning, quite
+early—_very_ early—and go back to our dear old hole on the river?”
+
+“No, no, we’ll see it out,” whispered back the Rat. “Thanks awfully,
+but I ought to stick by Toad till this trip is ended. It wouldn’t be
+safe for him to be left to himself. It won’t take very long. His fads
+never do. Good night!”
+
+The end was indeed nearer than even the Rat suspected.
+
+After so much open air and excitement the Toad slept very soundly, and
+no amount of shaking could rouse him out of bed next morning. So the
+Mole and Rat turned to, quietly and manfully, and while the Rat saw to
+the horse, and lit a fire, and cleaned last night’s cups and platters,
+and got things ready for breakfast, the Mole trudged off to the nearest
+village, a long way off, for milk and eggs and various necessaries the
+Toad had, of course, forgotten to provide. The hard work had all been
+done, and the two animals were resting, thoroughly exhausted, by the
+time Toad appeared on the scene, fresh and gay, remarking what a
+pleasant easy life it was they were all leading now, after the cares
+and worries and fatigues of housekeeping at home.
+
+They had a pleasant ramble that day over grassy downs and along narrow
+by-lanes, and camped as before, on a common, only this time the two
+guests took care that Toad should do his fair share of work. In
+consequence, when the time came for starting next morning, Toad was by
+no means so rapturous about the simplicity of the primitive life, and
+indeed attempted to resume his place in his bunk, whence he was hauled
+by force. Their way lay, as before, across country by narrow lanes, and
+it was not till the afternoon that they came out on the high-road,
+their first high-road; and there disaster, fleet and unforeseen, sprang
+out on them—disaster momentous indeed to their expedition, but simply
+overwhelming in its effect on the after-career of Toad.
+
+They were strolling along the high-road easily, the Mole by the horse’s
+head, talking to him, since the horse had complained that he was being
+frightfully left out of it, and nobody considered him in the least; the
+Toad and the Water Rat walking behind the cart talking together—at
+least Toad was talking, and Rat was saying at intervals, “Yes,
+precisely; and what did _you_ say to _him?_”—and thinking all the time
+of something very different, when far behind them they heard a faint
+warning hum; like the drone of a distant bee. Glancing back, they saw a
+small cloud of dust, with a dark centre of energy, advancing on them at
+incredible speed, while from out the dust a faint “Poop-poop!” wailed
+like an uneasy animal in pain. Hardly regarding it, they turned to
+resume their conversation, when in an instant (as it seemed) the
+peaceful scene was changed, and with a blast of wind and a whirl of
+sound that made them jump for the nearest ditch, It was on them! The
+“Poop-poop” rang with a brazen shout in their ears, they had a moment’s
+glimpse of an interior of glittering plate-glass and rich morocco, and
+the magnificent motor-car, immense, breath-snatching, passionate, with
+its pilot tense and hugging his wheel, possessed all earth and air for
+the fraction of a second, flung an enveloping cloud of dust that
+blinded and enwrapped them utterly, and then dwindled to a speck in the
+far distance, changed back into a droning bee once more.
+
+The old grey horse, dreaming, as he plodded along, of his quiet
+paddock, in a new raw situation such as this simply abandoned himself
+to his natural emotions. Rearing, plunging, backing steadily, in spite
+of all the Mole’s efforts at his head, and all the Mole’s lively
+language directed at his better feelings, he drove the cart backwards
+towards the deep ditch at the side of the road. It wavered an
+instant—then there was a heartrending crash—and the canary-coloured
+cart, their pride and their joy, lay on its side in the ditch, an
+irredeemable wreck.
+
+The Rat danced up and down in the road, simply transported with
+passion. “You villains!” he shouted, shaking both fists, “You
+scoundrels, you highwaymen, you—you—roadhogs!—I’ll have the law of you!
+I’ll report you! I’ll take you through all the Courts!” His
+home-sickness had quite slipped away from him, and for the moment he
+was the skipper of the canary-coloured vessel driven on a shoal by the
+reckless jockeying of rival mariners, and he was trying to recollect
+all the fine and biting things he used to say to masters of
+steam-launches when their wash, as they drove too near the bank, used
+to flood his parlour-carpet at home.
+
+Toad sat straight down in the middle of the dusty road, his legs
+stretched out before him, and stared fixedly in the direction of the
+disappearing motor-car. He breathed short, his face wore a placid
+satisfied expression, and at intervals he faintly murmured “Poop-poop!”
+
+The Mole was busy trying to quiet the horse, which he succeeded in
+doing after a time. Then he went to look at the cart, on its side in
+the ditch. It was indeed a sorry sight. Panels and windows smashed,
+axles hopelessly bent, one wheel off, sardine-tins scattered over the
+wide world, and the bird in the bird-cage sobbing pitifully and calling
+to be let out.
+
+The Rat came to help him, but their united efforts were not sufficient
+to right the cart. “Hi! Toad!” they cried. “Come and bear a hand, can’t
+you!”
+
+The Toad never answered a word, or budged from his seat in the road; so
+they went to see what was the matter with him. They found him in a sort
+of a trance, a happy smile on his face, his eyes still fixed on the
+dusty wake of their destroyer. At intervals he was still heard to
+murmur “Poop-poop!”
+
+The Rat shook him by the shoulder. “Are you coming to help us, Toad?”
+he demanded sternly.
+
+“Glorious, stirring sight!” murmured Toad, never offering to move. “The
+poetry of motion! The _real_ way to travel! The _only_ way to travel!
+Here to-day—in next week to-morrow! Villages skipped, towns and cities
+jumped—always somebody else’s horizon! O bliss! O poop-poop! O my! O
+my!”
+
+“O _stop_ being an ass, Toad!” cried the Mole despairingly.
+
+“And to think I never _knew!_” went on the Toad in a dreamy monotone.
+“All those wasted years that lie behind me, I never knew, never even
+_dreamt!_ But _now_—but now that I know, now that I fully realise! O
+what a flowery track lies spread before me, henceforth! What
+dust-clouds shall spring up behind me as I speed on my reckless way!
+What carts I shall fling carelessly into the ditch in the wake of my
+magnificent onset! Horrid little carts—common carts—canary-coloured
+carts!”
+
+“What are we to do with him?” asked the Mole of the Water Rat.
+
+“Nothing at all,” replied the Rat firmly. “Because there is really
+nothing to be done. You see, I know him from of old. He is now
+possessed. He has got a new craze, and it always takes him that way, in
+its first stage. He’ll continue like that for days now, like an animal
+walking in a happy dream, quite useless for all practical purposes.
+Never mind him. Let’s go and see what there is to be done about the
+cart.”
+
+A careful inspection showed them that, even if they succeeded in
+righting it by themselves, the cart would travel no longer. The axles
+were in a hopeless state, and the missing wheel was shattered into
+pieces.
+
+The Rat knotted the horse’s reins over his back and took him by the
+head, carrying the bird cage and its hysterical occupant in the other
+hand. “Come on!” he said grimly to the Mole. “It’s five or six miles to
+the nearest town, and we shall just have to walk it. The sooner we make
+a start the better.”
+
+“But what about Toad?” asked the Mole anxiously, as they set off
+together. “We can’t leave him here, sitting in the middle of the road
+by himself, in the distracted state he’s in! It’s not safe. Supposing
+another Thing were to come along?”
+
+“O, _bother_ Toad,” said the Rat savagely; “I’ve done with him!”
+
+They had not proceeded very far on their way, however, when there was a
+pattering of feet behind them, and Toad caught them up and thrust a paw
+inside the elbow of each of them; still breathing short and staring
+into vacancy.
+
+“Now, look here, Toad!” said the Rat sharply: “as soon as we get to the
+town, you’ll have to go straight to the police-station, and see if they
+know anything about that motor-car and who it belongs to, and lodge a
+complaint against it. And then you’ll have to go to a blacksmith’s or a
+wheelwright’s and arrange for the cart to be fetched and mended and put
+to rights. It’ll take time, but it’s not quite a hopeless smash.
+Meanwhile, the Mole and I will go to an inn and find comfortable rooms
+where we can stay till the cart’s ready, and till your nerves have
+recovered their shock.”
+
+“Police-station! Complaint!” murmured Toad dreamily. “Me _complain_ of
+that beautiful, that heavenly vision that has been vouchsafed me!
+_Mend_ the _cart!_ I’ve done with carts for ever. I never want to see
+the cart, or to hear of it, again. O, Ratty! You can’t think how
+obliged I am to you for consenting to come on this trip! I wouldn’t
+have gone without you, and then I might never have seen that—that swan,
+that sunbeam, that thunderbolt! I might never have heard that
+entrancing sound, or smelt that bewitching smell! I owe it all to you,
+my best of friends!”
+
+The Rat turned from him in despair. “You see what it is?” he said to
+the Mole, addressing him across Toad’s head: “He’s quite hopeless. I
+give it up—when we get to the town we’ll go to the railway station, and
+with luck we may pick up a train there that’ll get us back to riverbank
+to-night. And if ever you catch me going a-pleasuring with this
+provoking animal again!”—He snorted, and during the rest of that weary
+trudge addressed his remarks exclusively to Mole.
+
+On reaching the town they went straight to the station and deposited
+Toad in the second-class waiting-room, giving a porter twopence to keep
+a strict eye on him. They then left the horse at an inn stable, and
+gave what directions they could about the cart and its contents.
+Eventually, a slow train having landed them at a station not very far
+from Toad Hall, they escorted the spell-bound, sleep-walking Toad to
+his door, put him inside it, and instructed his housekeeper to feed
+him, undress him, and put him to bed. Then they got out their boat from
+the boat-house, sculled down the river home, and at a very late hour
+sat down to supper in their own cosy riverside parlour, to the Rat’s
+great joy and contentment.
+
+The following evening the Mole, who had risen late and taken things
+very easy all day, was sitting on the bank fishing, when the Rat, who
+had been looking up his friends and gossiping, came strolling along to
+find him. “Heard the news?” he said. “There’s nothing else being talked
+about, all along the river bank. Toad went up to Town by an early train
+this morning. And he has ordered a large and very expensive motor-car.”
+
+
+
+
+III.
+THE WILD WOOD
+
+
+The Mole had long wanted to make the acquaintance of the Badger. He
+seemed, by all accounts, to be such an important personage and, though
+rarely visible, to make his unseen influence felt by everybody about
+the place. But whenever the Mole mentioned his wish to the Water Rat he
+always found himself put off. “It’s all right,” the Rat would say.
+“Badger’ll turn up some day or other—he’s always turning up—and then
+I’ll introduce you. The best of fellows! But you must not only take him
+_as_ you find him, but _when_ you find him.”
+
+“Couldn’t you ask him here dinner or something?” said the Mole.
+
+“He wouldn’t come,” replied the Rat simply. “Badger hates Society, and
+invitations, and dinner, and all that sort of thing.”
+
+“Well, then, supposing we go and call on _him?_” suggested the Mole.
+
+“O, I’m sure he wouldn’t like that at _all_,” said the Rat, quite
+alarmed. “He’s so very shy, he’d be sure to be offended. I’ve never
+even ventured to call on him at his own home myself, though I know him
+so well. Besides, we can’t. It’s quite out of the question, because he
+lives in the very middle of the Wild Wood.”
+
+“Well, supposing he does,” said the Mole. “You told me the Wild Wood
+was all right, you know.”
+
+“O, I know, I know, so it is,” replied the Rat evasively. “But I think
+we won’t go there just now. Not _just_ yet. It’s a long way, and he
+wouldn’t be at home at this time of year anyhow, and he’ll be coming
+along some day, if you’ll wait quietly.”
+
+The Mole had to be content with this. But the Badger never came along,
+and every day brought its amusements, and it was not till summer was
+long over, and cold and frost and miry ways kept them much indoors, and
+the swollen river raced past outside their windows with a speed that
+mocked at boating of any sort or kind, that he found his thoughts
+dwelling again with much persistence on the solitary grey Badger, who
+lived his own life by himself, in his hole in the middle of the Wild
+Wood.
+
+In the winter time the Rat slept a great deal, retiring early and
+rising late. During his short day he sometimes scribbled poetry or did
+other small domestic jobs about the house; and, of course, there were
+always animals dropping in for a chat, and consequently there was a
+good deal of story-telling and comparing notes on the past summer and
+all its doings.
+
+Such a rich chapter it had been, when one came to look back on it all!
+With illustrations so numerous and so very highly coloured! The pageant
+of the river bank had marched steadily along, unfolding itself in
+scene-pictures that succeeded each other in stately procession. Purple
+loosestrife arrived early, shaking luxuriant tangled locks along the
+edge of the mirror whence its own face laughed back at it. Willow-herb,
+tender and wistful, like a pink sunset cloud, was not slow to follow.
+Comfrey, the purple hand-in-hand with the white, crept forth to take
+its place in the line; and at last one morning the diffident and
+delaying dog-rose stepped delicately on the stage, and one knew, as if
+string-music had announced it in stately chords that strayed into a
+gavotte, that June at last was here. One member of the company was
+still awaited; the shepherd-boy for the nymphs to woo, the knight for
+whom the ladies waited at the window, the prince that was to kiss the
+sleeping summer back to life and love. But when meadow-sweet, debonair
+and odorous in amber jerkin, moved graciously to his place in the
+group, then the play was ready to begin.
+
+And what a play it had been! Drowsy animals, snug in their holes while
+wind and rain were battering at their doors, recalled still keen
+mornings, an hour before sunrise, when the white mist, as yet
+undispersed, clung closely along the surface of the water; then the
+shock of the early plunge, the scamper along the bank, and the radiant
+transformation of earth, air, and water, when suddenly the sun was with
+them again, and grey was gold and colour was born and sprang out of the
+earth once more. They recalled the languorous siesta of hot mid-day,
+deep in green undergrowth, the sun striking through in tiny golden
+shafts and spots; the boating and bathing of the afternoon, the rambles
+along dusty lanes and through yellow cornfields; and the long, cool
+evening at last, when so many threads were gathered up, so many
+friendships rounded, and so many adventures planned for the morrow.
+There was plenty to talk about on those short winter days when the
+animals found themselves round the fire; still, the Mole had a good
+deal of spare time on his hands, and so one afternoon, when the Rat in
+his arm-chair before the blaze was alternately dozing and trying over
+rhymes that wouldn’t fit, he formed the resolution to go out by himself
+and explore the Wild Wood, and perhaps strike up an acquaintance with
+Mr. Badger.
+
+It was a cold still afternoon with a hard steely sky overhead, when he
+slipped out of the warm parlour into the open air. The country lay bare
+and entirely leafless around him, and he thought that he had never seen
+so far and so intimately into the insides of things as on that winter
+day when Nature was deep in her annual slumber and seemed to have
+kicked the clothes off. Copses, dells, quarries and all hidden places,
+which had been mysterious mines for exploration in leafy summer, now
+exposed themselves and their secrets pathetically, and seemed to ask
+him to overlook their shabby poverty for a while, till they could riot
+in rich masquerade as before, and trick and entice him with the old
+deceptions. It was pitiful in a way, and yet cheering—even
+exhilarating. He was glad that he liked the country undecorated, hard,
+and stripped of its finery. He had got down to the bare bones of it,
+and they were fine and strong and simple. He did not want the warm
+clover and the play of seeding grasses; the screens of quickset, the
+billowy drapery of beech and elm seemed best away; and with great
+cheerfulness of spirit he pushed on towards the Wild Wood, which lay
+before him low and threatening, like a black reef in some still
+southern sea.
+
+There was nothing to alarm him at first entry. Twigs crackled under his
+feet, logs tripped him, funguses on stumps resembled caricatures, and
+startled him for the moment by their likeness to something familiar and
+far away; but that was all fun, and exciting. It led him on, and he
+penetrated to where the light was less, and trees crouched nearer and
+nearer, and holes made ugly mouths at him on either side.
+
+Everything was very still now. The dusk advanced on him steadily,
+rapidly, gathering in behind and before; and the light seemed to be
+draining away like flood-water.
+
+Then the faces began.
+
+It was over his shoulder, and indistinctly, that he first thought he
+saw a face; a little evil wedge-shaped face, looking out at him from a
+hole. When he turned and confronted it, the thing had vanished.
+
+He quickened his pace, telling himself cheerfully not to begin
+imagining things, or there would be simply no end to it. He passed
+another hole, and another, and another; and then—yes!—no!—yes!
+certainly a little narrow face, with hard eyes, had flashed up for an
+instant from a hole, and was gone. He hesitated—braced himself up for
+an effort and strode on. Then suddenly, and as if it had been so all
+the time, every hole, far and near, and there were hundreds of them,
+seemed to possess its face, coming and going rapidly, all fixing on him
+glances of malice and hatred: all hard-eyed and evil and sharp.
+
+If he could only get away from the holes in the banks, he thought,
+there would be no more faces. He swung off the path and plunged into
+the untrodden places of the wood.
+
+Then the whistling began.
+
+Very faint and shrill it was, and far behind him, when first he heard
+it; but somehow it made him hurry forward. Then, still very faint and
+shrill, it sounded far ahead of him, and made him hesitate and want to
+go back. As he halted in indecision it broke out on either side, and
+seemed to be caught up and passed on throughout the whole length of the
+wood to its farthest limit. They were up and alert and ready,
+evidently, whoever they were! And he—he was alone, and unarmed, and far
+from any help; and the night was closing in.
+
+Then the pattering began.
+
+He thought it was only falling leaves at first, so slight and delicate
+was the sound of it. Then as it grew it took a regular rhythm, and he
+knew it for nothing else but the pat-pat-pat of little feet still a
+very long way off. Was it in front or behind? It seemed to be first
+one, and then the other, then both. It grew and it multiplied, till
+from every quarter as he listened anxiously, leaning this way and that,
+it seemed to be closing in on him. As he stood still to hearken, a
+rabbit came running hard towards him through the trees. He waited,
+expecting it to slacken pace, or to swerve from him into a different
+course. Instead, the animal almost brushed him as it dashed past, his
+face set and hard, his eyes staring. “Get out of this, you fool, get
+out!” the Mole heard him mutter as he swung round a stump and
+disappeared down a friendly burrow.
+
+The pattering increased till it sounded like sudden hail on the dry
+leaf-carpet spread around him. The whole wood seemed running now,
+running hard, hunting, chasing, closing in round something or—somebody?
+In panic, he began to run too, aimlessly, he knew not whither. He ran
+up against things, he fell over things and into things, he darted under
+things and dodged round things. At last he took refuge in the deep dark
+hollow of an old beech tree, which offered shelter, concealment—perhaps
+even safety, but who could tell? Anyhow, he was too tired to run any
+further, and could only snuggle down into the dry leaves which had
+drifted into the hollow and hope he was safe for a time. And as he lay
+there panting and trembling, and listened to the whistlings and the
+patterings outside, he knew it at last, in all its fullness, that dread
+thing which other little dwellers in field and hedgerow had encountered
+here, and known as their darkest moment—that thing which the Rat had
+vainly tried to shield him from—the Terror of the Wild Wood!
+
+Meantime the Rat, warm and comfortable, dozed by his fireside. His
+paper of half-finished verses slipped from his knee, his head fell
+back, his mouth opened, and he wandered by the verdant banks of
+dream-rivers. Then a coal slipped, the fire crackled and sent up a
+spurt of flame, and he woke with a start. Remembering what he had been
+engaged upon, he reached down to the floor for his verses, pored over
+them for a minute, and then looked round for the Mole to ask him if he
+knew a good rhyme for something or other.
+
+But the Mole was not there.
+
+He listened for a time. The house seemed very quiet.
+
+Then he called “Moly!” several times, and, receiving no answer, got up
+and went out into the hall.
+
+The Mole’s cap was missing from its accustomed peg. His goloshes, which
+always lay by the umbrella-stand, were also gone.
+
+The Rat left the house, and carefully examined the muddy surface of the
+ground outside, hoping to find the Mole’s tracks. There they were, sure
+enough. The goloshes were new, just bought for the winter, and the
+pimples on their soles were fresh and sharp. He could see the imprints
+of them in the mud, running along straight and purposeful, leading
+direct to the Wild Wood.
+
+The Rat looked very grave, and stood in deep thought for a minute or
+two. Then he re-entered the house, strapped a belt round his waist,
+shoved a brace of pistols into it, took up a stout cudgel that stood in
+a corner of the hall, and set off for the Wild Wood at a smart pace.
+
+It was already getting towards dusk when he reached the first fringe of
+trees and plunged without hesitation into the wood, looking anxiously
+on either side for any sign of his friend. Here and there wicked little
+faces popped out of holes, but vanished immediately at sight of the
+valorous animal, his pistols, and the great ugly cudgel in his grasp;
+and the whistling and pattering, which he had heard quite plainly on
+his first entry, died away and ceased, and all was very still. He made
+his way manfully through the length of the wood, to its furthest edge;
+then, forsaking all paths, he set himself to traverse it, laboriously
+working over the whole ground, and all the time calling out cheerfully,
+“Moly, Moly, Moly! Where are you? It’s me—it’s old Rat!”
+
+He had patiently hunted through the wood for an hour or more, when at
+last to his joy he heard a little answering cry. Guiding himself by the
+sound, he made his way through the gathering darkness to the foot of an
+old beech tree, with a hole in it, and from out of the hole came a
+feeble voice, saying “Ratty! Is that really you?”
+
+The Rat crept into the hollow, and there he found the Mole, exhausted
+and still trembling. “O Rat!” he cried, “I’ve been so frightened, you
+can’t think!”
+
+“O, I quite understand,” said the Rat soothingly. “You shouldn’t really
+have gone and done it, Mole. I did my best to keep you from it. We
+river-bankers, we hardly ever come here by ourselves. If we have to
+come, we come in couples, at least; then we’re generally all right.
+Besides, there are a hundred things one has to know, which we
+understand all about and you don’t, as yet. I mean passwords, and
+signs, and sayings which have power and effect, and plants you carry in
+your pocket, and verses you repeat, and dodges and tricks you practise;
+all simple enough when you know them, but they’ve got to be known if
+you’re small, or you’ll find yourself in trouble. Of course if you were
+Badger or Otter, it would be quite another matter.”
+
+“Surely the brave Mr. Toad wouldn’t mind coming here by himself, would
+he?” inquired the Mole.
+
+“Old Toad?” said the Rat, laughing heartily. “He wouldn’t show his face
+here alone, not for a whole hatful of golden guineas, Toad wouldn’t.”
+
+The Mole was greatly cheered by the sound of the Rat’s careless
+laughter, as well as by the sight of his stick and his gleaming
+pistols, and he stopped shivering and began to feel bolder and more
+himself again.
+
+“Now then,” said the Rat presently, “we really must pull ourselves
+together and make a start for home while there’s still a little light
+left. It will never do to spend the night here, you understand. Too
+cold, for one thing.”
+
+“Dear Ratty,” said the poor Mole, “I’m dreadfully sorry, but I’m simply
+dead beat and that’s a solid fact. You _must_ let me rest here a while
+longer, and get my strength back, if I’m to get home at all.”
+
+“O, all right,” said the good-natured Rat, “rest away. It’s pretty
+nearly pitch dark now, anyhow; and there ought to be a bit of a moon
+later.”
+
+So the Mole got well into the dry leaves and stretched himself out, and
+presently dropped off into sleep, though of a broken and troubled sort;
+while the Rat covered himself up, too, as best he might, for warmth,
+and lay patiently waiting, with a pistol in his paw.
+
+When at last the Mole woke up, much refreshed and in his usual spirits,
+the Rat said, “Now then! I’ll just take a look outside and see if
+everything’s quiet, and then we really must be off.”
+
+He went to the entrance of their retreat and put his head out. Then the
+Mole heard him saying quietly to himself, “Hullo! hullo! here—is—a—go!”
+
+“What’s up, Ratty?” asked the Mole.
+
+“_Snow_ is up,” replied the Rat briefly; “or rather, _down_. It’s
+snowing hard.”
+
+The Mole came and crouched beside him, and, looking out, saw the wood
+that had been so dreadful to him in quite a changed aspect. Holes,
+hollows, pools, pitfalls, and other black menaces to the wayfarer were
+vanishing fast, and a gleaming carpet of faery was springing up
+everywhere, that looked too delicate to be trodden upon by rough feet.
+A fine powder filled the air and caressed the cheek with a tingle in
+its touch, and the black boles of the trees showed up in a light that
+seemed to come from below.
+
+“Well, well, it can’t be helped,” said the Rat, after pondering. “We
+must make a start, and take our chance, I suppose. The worst of it is,
+I don’t exactly know where we are. And now this snow makes everything
+look so very different.”
+
+It did indeed. The Mole would not have known that it was the same wood.
+However, they set out bravely, and took the line that seemed most
+promising, holding on to each other and pretending with invincible
+cheerfulness that they recognized an old friend in every fresh tree
+that grimly and silently greeted them, or saw openings, gaps, or paths
+with a familiar turn in them, in the monotony of white space and black
+tree-trunks that refused to vary.
+
+An hour or two later—they had lost all count of time—they pulled up,
+dispirited, weary, and hopelessly at sea, and sat down on a fallen
+tree-trunk to recover their breath and consider what was to be done.
+They were aching with fatigue and bruised with tumbles; they had fallen
+into several holes and got wet through; the snow was getting so deep
+that they could hardly drag their little legs through it, and the trees
+were thicker and more like each other than ever. There seemed to be no
+end to this wood, and no beginning, and no difference in it, and, worst
+of all, no way out.
+
+“We can’t sit here very long,” said the Rat. “We shall have to make
+another push for it, and do something or other. The cold is too awful
+for anything, and the snow will soon be too deep for us to wade
+through.” He peered about him and considered. “Look here,” he went on,
+“this is what occurs to me. There’s a sort of dell down here in front
+of us, where the ground seems all hilly and humpy and hummocky. We’ll
+make our way down into that, and try and find some sort of shelter, a
+cave or hole with a dry floor to it, out of the snow and the wind, and
+there we’ll have a good rest before we try again, for we’re both of us
+pretty dead beat. Besides, the snow may leave off, or something may
+turn up.”
+
+So once more they got on their feet, and struggled down into the dell,
+where they hunted about for a cave or some corner that was dry and a
+protection from the keen wind and the whirling snow. They were
+investigating one of the hummocky bits the Rat had spoken of, when
+suddenly the Mole tripped up and fell forward on his face with a
+squeal.
+
+“O my leg!” he cried. “O my poor shin!” and he sat up on the snow and
+nursed his leg in both his front paws.
+
+“Poor old Mole!” said the Rat kindly.
+
+“You don’t seem to be having much luck to-day, do you? Let’s have a
+look at the leg. Yes,” he went on, going down on his knees to look,
+“you’ve cut your shin, sure enough. Wait till I get at my handkerchief,
+and I’ll tie it up for you.”
+
+“I must have tripped over a hidden branch or a stump,” said the Mole
+miserably. “O, my! O, my!”
+
+“It’s a very clean cut,” said the Rat, examining it again attentively.
+“That was never done by a branch or a stump. Looks as if it was made by
+a sharp edge of something in metal. Funny!” He pondered awhile, and
+examined the humps and slopes that surrounded them.
+
+“Well, never mind what done it,” said the Mole, forgetting his grammar
+in his pain. “It hurts just the same, whatever done it.”
+
+But the Rat, after carefully tying up the leg with his handkerchief,
+had left him and was busy scraping in the snow. He scratched and
+shovelled and explored, all four legs working busily, while the Mole
+waited impatiently, remarking at intervals, “O, _come_ on, Rat!”
+
+Suddenly the Rat cried “Hooray!” and then
+“Hooray-oo-ray-oo-ray-oo-ray!” and fell to executing a feeble jig in
+the snow.
+
+“What _have_ you found, Ratty?” asked the Mole, still nursing his leg.
+
+“Come and see!” said the delighted Rat, as he jigged on.
+
+The Mole hobbled up to the spot and had a good look.
+
+“Well,” he said at last, slowly, “I SEE it right enough. Seen the same
+sort of thing before, lots of times. Familiar object, I call it. A
+door-scraper! Well, what of it? Why dance jigs around a door-scraper?”
+
+“But don’t you see what it _means_, you—you dull-witted animal?” cried
+the Rat impatiently.
+
+“Of course I see what it means,” replied the Mole. “It simply means
+that some VERY careless and forgetful person has left his door-scraper
+lying about in the middle of the Wild Wood, _just_ where it’s _sure_ to
+trip _everybody_ up. Very thoughtless of him, I call it. When I get
+home I shall go and complain about it to—to somebody or other, see if I
+don’t!”
+
+“O, dear! O, dear!” cried the Rat, in despair at his obtuseness. “Here,
+stop arguing and come and scrape!” And he set to work again and made
+the snow fly in all directions around him.
+
+After some further toil his efforts were rewarded, and a very shabby
+door-mat lay exposed to view.
+
+“There, what did I tell you?” exclaimed the Rat in great triumph.
+
+“Absolutely nothing whatever,” replied the Mole, with perfect
+truthfulness. “Well now,” he went on, “you seem to have found another
+piece of domestic litter, done for and thrown away, and I suppose
+you’re perfectly happy. Better go ahead and dance your jig round that
+if you’ve got to, and get it over, and then perhaps we can go on and
+not waste any more time over rubbish-heaps. Can we EAT a doormat? or
+sleep under a door-mat? Or sit on a door-mat and sledge home over the
+snow on it, you exasperating rodent?”
+
+“Do—you—mean—to—say,” cried the excited Rat, “that this door-mat
+doesn’t _tell_ you anything?”
+
+“Really, Rat,” said the Mole, quite pettishly, “I think we’d had enough
+of this folly. Who ever heard of a door-mat _telling_ anyone anything?
+They simply don’t do it. They are not that sort at all. Door-mats know
+their place.”
+
+“Now look here, you—you thick-headed beast,” replied the Rat, really
+angry, “this must stop. Not another word, but scrape—scrape and scratch
+and dig and hunt round, especially on the sides of the hummocks, if you
+want to sleep dry and warm to-night, for it’s our last chance!”
+
+The Rat attacked a snow-bank beside them with ardour, probing with his
+cudgel everywhere and then digging with fury; and the Mole scraped
+busily too, more to oblige the Rat than for any other reason, for his
+opinion was that his friend was getting light-headed.
+
+Some ten minutes’ hard work, and the point of the Rat’s cudgel struck
+something that sounded hollow. He worked till he could get a paw
+through and feel; then called the Mole to come and help him. Hard at it
+went the two animals, till at last the result of their labours stood
+full in view of the astonished and hitherto incredulous Mole.
+
+In the side of what had seemed to be a snow-bank stood a solid-looking
+little door, painted a dark green. An iron bell-pull hung by the side,
+and below it, on a small brass plate, neatly engraved in square capital
+letters, they could read by the aid of moonlight
+
+MR. BADGER.
+
+
+The Mole fell backwards on the snow from sheer surprise and delight.
+“Rat!” he cried in penitence, “you’re a wonder! A real wonder, that’s
+what you are. I see it all now! You argued it out, step by step, in
+that wise head of yours, from the very moment that I fell and cut my
+shin, and you looked at the cut, and at once your majestic mind said to
+itself, ‘Door-scraper!’ And then you turned to and found the very
+door-scraper that done it! Did you stop there? No. Some people would
+have been quite satisfied; but not you. Your intellect went on working.
+‘Let me only just find a door-mat,’ says you to yourself, ‘and my
+theory is proved!’ And of course you found your door-mat. You’re so
+clever, I believe you could find anything you liked. ‘Now,’ says you,
+‘that door exists, as plain as if I saw it. There’s nothing else
+remains to be done but to find it!’ Well, I’ve read about that sort of
+thing in books, but I’ve never come across it before in real life. You
+ought to go where you’ll be properly appreciated. You’re simply wasted
+here, among us fellows. If I only had your head, Ratty——”
+
+“But as you haven’t,” interrupted the Rat, rather unkindly, “I suppose
+you’re going to sit on the snow all night and _talk?_ Get up at once
+and hang on to that bell-pull you see there, and ring hard, as hard as
+you can, while I hammer!”
+
+While the Rat attacked the door with his stick, the Mole sprang up at
+the bell-pull, clutched it and swung there, both feet well off the
+ground, and from quite a long way off they could faintly hear a
+deep-toned bell respond.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+MR. BADGER
+
+
+THEY waited patiently for what seemed a very long time, stamping in the
+snow to keep their feet warm. At last they heard the sound of slow
+shuffling footsteps approaching the door from the inside. It seemed, as
+the Mole remarked to the Rat, like some one walking in carpet slippers
+that were too large for him and down at heel; which was intelligent of
+Mole, because that was exactly what it was.
+
+There was the noise of a bolt shot back, and the door opened a few
+inches, enough to show a long snout and a pair of sleepy blinking eyes.
+
+“Now, the _very_ next time this happens,” said a gruff and suspicious
+voice, “I shall be exceedingly angry. Who is it _this_ time, disturbing
+people on such a night? Speak up!”
+
+“Oh, Badger,” cried the Rat, “let us in, please. It’s me, Rat, and my
+friend Mole, and we’ve lost our way in the snow.”
+
+“What, Ratty, my dear little man!” exclaimed the Badger, in quite a
+different voice. “Come along in, both of you, at once. Why, you must be
+perished. Well I never! Lost in the snow! And in the Wild Wood, too,
+and at this time of night! But come in with you.”
+
+The two animals tumbled over each other in their eagerness to get
+inside, and heard the door shut behind them with great joy and relief.
+
+The Badger, who wore a long dressing-gown, and whose slippers were
+indeed very down at heel, carried a flat candlestick in his paw and had
+probably been on his way to bed when their summons sounded. He looked
+kindly down on them and patted both their heads. “This is not the sort
+of night for small animals to be out,” he said paternally. “I’m afraid
+you’ve been up to some of your pranks again, Ratty. But come along;
+come into the kitchen. There’s a first-rate fire there, and supper and
+everything.”
+
+He shuffled on in front of them, carrying the light, and they followed
+him, nudging each other in an anticipating sort of way, down a long,
+gloomy, and, to tell the truth, decidedly shabby passage, into a sort
+of a central hall; out of which they could dimly see other long
+tunnel-like passages branching, passages mysterious and without
+apparent end. But there were doors in the hall as well—stout oaken
+comfortable-looking doors. One of these the Badger flung open, and at
+once they found themselves in all the glow and warmth of a large
+fire-lit kitchen.
+
+The floor was well-worn red brick, and on the wide hearth burnt a fire
+of logs, between two attractive chimney-corners tucked away in the
+wall, well out of any suspicion of draught. A couple of high-backed
+settles, facing each other on either side of the fire, gave further
+sitting accommodations for the sociably disposed. In the middle of the
+room stood a long table of plain boards placed on trestles, with
+benches down each side. At one end of it, where an arm-chair stood
+pushed back, were spread the remains of the Badger’s plain but ample
+supper. Rows of spotless plates winked from the shelves of the dresser
+at the far end of the room, and from the rafters overhead hung hams,
+bundles of dried herbs, nets of onions, and baskets of eggs. It seemed
+a place where heroes could fitly feast after victory, where weary
+harvesters could line up in scores along the table and keep their
+Harvest Home with mirth and song, or where two or three friends of
+simple tastes could sit about as they pleased and eat and smoke and
+talk in comfort and contentment. The ruddy brick floor smiled up at the
+smoky ceiling; the oaken settles, shiny with long wear, exchanged
+cheerful glances with each other; plates on the dresser grinned at pots
+on the shelf, and the merry firelight flickered and played over
+everything without distinction.
+
+The kindly Badger thrust them down on a settle to toast themselves at
+the fire, and bade them remove their wet coats and boots. Then he
+fetched them dressing-gowns and slippers, and himself bathed the Mole’s
+shin with warm water and mended the cut with sticking-plaster till the
+whole thing was just as good as new, if not better. In the embracing
+light and warmth, warm and dry at last, with weary legs propped up in
+front of them, and a suggestive clink of plates being arranged on the
+table behind, it seemed to the storm-driven animals, now in safe
+anchorage, that the cold and trackless Wild Wood just left outside was
+miles and miles away, and all that they had suffered in it a
+half-forgotten dream.
+
+When at last they were thoroughly toasted, the Badger summoned them to
+the table, where he had been busy laying a repast. They had felt pretty
+hungry before, but when they actually saw at last the supper that was
+spread for them, really it seemed only a question of what they should
+attack first where all was so attractive, and whether the other things
+would obligingly wait for them till they had time to give them
+attention. Conversation was impossible for a long time; and when it was
+slowly resumed, it was that regrettable sort of conversation that
+results from talking with your mouth full. The Badger did not mind that
+sort of thing at all, nor did he take any notice of elbows on the
+table, or everybody speaking at once. As he did not go into Society
+himself, he had got an idea that these things belonged to the things
+that didn’t really matter. (We know of course that he was wrong, and
+took too narrow a view; because they do matter very much, though it
+would take too long to explain why.) He sat in his arm-chair at the
+head of the table, and nodded gravely at intervals as the animals told
+their story; and he did not seem surprised or shocked at anything, and
+he never said, “I told you so,” or, “Just what I always said,” or
+remarked that they ought to have done so-and-so, or ought not to have
+done something else. The Mole began to feel very friendly towards him.
+
+When supper was really finished at last, and each animal felt that his
+skin was now as tight as was decently safe, and that by this time he
+didn’t care a hang for anybody or anything, they gathered round the
+glowing embers of the great wood fire, and thought how jolly it was to
+be sitting up _so_ late, and _so_ independent, and _so_ full; and after
+they had chatted for a time about things in general, the Badger said
+heartily, “Now then! tell us the news from your part of the world.
+How’s old Toad going on?”
+
+“Oh, from bad to worse,” said the Rat gravely, while the Mole, cocked
+up on a settle and basking in the firelight, his heels higher than his
+head, tried to look properly mournful. “Another smash-up only last
+week, and a bad one. You see, he will insist on driving himself, and
+he’s hopelessly incapable. If he’d only employ a decent, steady,
+well-trained animal, pay him good wages, and leave everything to him,
+he’d get on all right. But no; he’s convinced he’s a heaven-born
+driver, and nobody can teach him anything; and all the rest follows.”
+
+“How many has he had?” inquired the Badger gloomily.
+
+“Smashes, or machines?” asked the Rat. “Oh, well, after all, it’s the
+same thing—with Toad. This is the seventh. As for the others—you know
+that coach-house of his? Well, it’s piled up—literally piled up to the
+roof—with fragments of motor-cars, none of them bigger than your hat!
+That accounts for the other six—so far as they can be accounted for.”
+
+“He’s been in hospital three times,” put in the Mole; “and as for the
+fines he’s had to pay, it’s simply awful to think of.”
+
+“Yes, and that’s part of the trouble,” continued the Rat. “Toad’s rich,
+we all know; but he’s not a millionaire. And he’s a hopelessly bad
+driver, and quite regardless of law and order. Killed or ruined—it’s
+got to be one of the two things, sooner or later. Badger! we’re his
+friends—oughtn’t we to do something?”
+
+The Badger went through a bit of hard thinking. “Now look here!” he
+said at last, rather severely; “of course you know I can’t do anything
+_now?_”
+
+His two friends assented, quite understanding his point. No animal,
+according to the rules of animal-etiquette, is ever expected to do
+anything strenuous, or heroic, or even moderately active during the
+off-season of winter. All are sleepy—some actually asleep. All are
+weather-bound, more or less; and all are resting from arduous days and
+nights, during which every muscle in them has been severely tested, and
+every energy kept at full stretch.
+
+“Very well then!” continued the Badger. “_But_, when once the year has
+really turned, and the nights are shorter, and halfway through them one
+rouses and feels fidgety and wanting to be up and doing by sunrise, if
+not before—_you_ know!——”
+
+Both animals nodded gravely. _They_ knew!
+
+“Well, _then_,” went on the Badger, “we—that is, you and me and our
+friend the Mole here—we’ll take Toad seriously in hand. We’ll stand no
+nonsense whatever. We’ll bring him back to reason, by force if need be.
+We’ll _make_ him be a sensible Toad. We’ll—you’re asleep, Rat!”
+
+“Not me!” said the Rat, waking up with a jerk.
+
+“He’s been asleep two or three times since supper,” said the Mole,
+laughing. He himself was feeling quite wakeful and even lively, though
+he didn’t know why. The reason was, of course, that he being naturally
+an underground animal by birth and breeding, the situation of Badger’s
+house exactly suited him and made him feel at home; while the Rat, who
+slept every night in a bedroom the windows of which opened on a breezy
+river, naturally felt the atmosphere still and oppressive.
+
+“Well, it’s time we were all in bed,” said the Badger, getting up and
+fetching flat candlesticks. “Come along, you two, and I’ll show you
+your quarters. And take your time tomorrow morning—breakfast at any
+hour you please!”
+
+He conducted the two animals to a long room that seemed half bedchamber
+and half loft. The Badger’s winter stores, which indeed were visible
+everywhere, took up half the room—piles of apples, turnips, and
+potatoes, baskets full of nuts, and jars of honey; but the two little
+white beds on the remainder of the floor looked soft and inviting, and
+the linen on them, though coarse, was clean and smelt beautifully of
+lavender; and the Mole and the Water Rat, shaking off their garments in
+some thirty seconds, tumbled in between the sheets in great joy and
+contentment.
+
+In accordance with the kindly Badger’s injunctions, the two tired
+animals came down to breakfast very late next morning, and found a
+bright fire burning in the kitchen, and two young hedgehogs sitting on
+a bench at the table, eating oatmeal porridge out of wooden bowls. The
+hedgehogs dropped their spoons, rose to their feet, and ducked their
+heads respectfully as the two entered.
+
+“There, sit down, sit down,” said the Rat pleasantly, “and go on with
+your porridge. Where have you youngsters come from? Lost your way in
+the snow, I suppose?”
+
+“Yes, please, sir,” said the elder of the two hedgehogs respectfully.
+“Me and little Billy here, we was trying to find our way to
+school—mother _would_ have us go, was the weather ever so—and of course
+we lost ourselves, sir, and Billy he got frightened and took and cried,
+being young and faint-hearted. And at last we happened up against Mr.
+Badger’s back door, and made so bold as to knock, sir, for Mr. Badger
+he’s a kind-hearted gentleman, as everyone knows——”
+
+“I understand,” said the Rat, cutting himself some rashers from a side
+of bacon, while the Mole dropped some eggs into a saucepan. “And what’s
+the weather like outside? You needn’t ‘sir’ me quite so much?” he
+added.
+
+“O, terrible bad, sir, terrible deep the snow is,” said the hedgehog.
+“No getting out for the likes of you gentlemen to-day.”
+
+“Where’s Mr. Badger?” inquired the Mole, as he warmed the coffee-pot
+before the fire.
+
+“The master’s gone into his study, sir,” replied the hedgehog, “and he
+said as how he was going to be particular busy this morning, and on no
+account was he to be disturbed.”
+
+This explanation, of course, was thoroughly understood by every one
+present. The fact is, as already set forth, when you live a life of
+intense activity for six months in the year, and of comparative or
+actual somnolence for the other six, during the latter period you
+cannot be continually pleading sleepiness when there are people about
+or things to be done. The excuse gets monotonous. The animals well knew
+that Badger, having eaten a hearty breakfast, had retired to his study
+and settled himself in an arm-chair with his legs up on another and a
+red cotton handkerchief over his face, and was being “busy” in the
+usual way at this time of the year.
+
+The front-door bell clanged loudly, and the Rat, who was very greasy
+with buttered toast, sent Billy, the smaller hedgehog, to see who it
+might be. There was a sound of much stamping in the hall, and presently
+Billy returned in front of the Otter, who threw himself on the Rat with
+an embrace and a shout of affectionate greeting.
+
+“Get off!” spluttered the Rat, with his mouth full.
+
+“Thought I should find you here all right,” said the Otter cheerfully.
+“They were all in a great state of alarm along River Bank when I
+arrived this morning. Rat never been home all night—nor Mole
+either—something dreadful must have happened, they said; and the snow
+had covered up all your tracks, of course. But I knew that when people
+were in any fix they mostly went to Badger, or else Badger got to know
+of it somehow, so I came straight off here, through the Wild Wood and
+the snow! My! it was fine, coming through the snow as the red sun was
+rising and showing against the black tree-trunks! As you went along in
+the stillness, every now and then masses of snow slid off the branches
+suddenly with a flop! making you jump and run for cover. Snow-castles
+and snow-caverns had sprung up out of nowhere in the night—and snow
+bridges, terraces, ramparts—I could have stayed and played with them
+for hours. Here and there great branches had been torn away by the
+sheer weight of the snow, and robins perched and hopped on them in
+their perky conceited way, just as if they had done it themselves. A
+ragged string of wild geese passed overhead, high on the grey sky, and
+a few rooks whirled over the trees, inspected, and flapped off
+homewards with a disgusted expression; but I met no sensible being to
+ask the news of. About halfway across I came on a rabbit sitting on a
+stump, cleaning his silly face with his paws. He was a pretty scared
+animal when I crept up behind him and placed a heavy forepaw on his
+shoulder. I had to cuff his head once or twice to get any sense out of
+it at all. At last I managed to extract from him that Mole had been
+seen in the Wild Wood last night by one of them. It was the talk of the
+burrows, he said, how Mole, Mr. Rat’s particular friend, was in a bad
+fix; how he had lost his way, and ‘They’ were up and out hunting, and
+were chivvying him round and round. ‘Then why didn’t any of you _do_
+something?’ I asked. ‘You mayn’t be blest with brains, but there are
+hundreds and hundreds of you, big, stout fellows, as fat as butter, and
+your burrows running in all directions, and you could have taken him in
+and made him safe and comfortable, or tried to, at all events.’ ‘What,
+_us?_’ he merely said: ‘_do_ something? us rabbits?’ So I cuffed him
+again and left him. There was nothing else to be done. At any rate, I
+had learnt something; and if I had had the luck to meet any of ‘Them’
+I’d have learnt something more—or _they_ would.”
+
+“Weren’t you at all—er—nervous?” asked the Mole, some of yesterday’s
+terror coming back to him at the mention of the Wild Wood.
+
+“Nervous?” The Otter showed a gleaming set of strong white teeth as he
+laughed. “I’d give ’em nerves if any of them tried anything on with me.
+Here, Mole, fry me some slices of ham, like the good little chap you
+are. I’m frightfully hungry, and I’ve got any amount to say to Ratty
+here. Haven’t seen him for an age.”
+
+So the good-natured Mole, having cut some slices of ham, set the
+hedgehogs to fry it, and returned to his own breakfast, while the Otter
+and the Rat, their heads together, eagerly talked river-shop, which is
+long shop and talk that is endless, running on like the babbling river
+itself.
+
+A plate of fried ham had just been cleared and sent back for more, when
+the Badger entered, yawning and rubbing his eyes, and greeted them all
+in his quiet, simple way, with kind enquiries for every one. “It must
+be getting on for luncheon time,” he remarked to the Otter. “Better
+stop and have it with us. You must be hungry, this cold morning.”
+
+“Rather!” replied the Otter, winking at the Mole. “The sight of these
+greedy young hedgehogs stuffing themselves with fried ham makes me feel
+positively famished.”
+
+The hedgehogs, who were just beginning to feel hungry again after their
+porridge, and after working so hard at their frying, looked timidly up
+at Mr. Badger, but were too shy to say anything.
+
+“Here, you two youngsters be off home to your mother,” said the Badger
+kindly. “I’ll send some one with you to show you the way. You won’t
+want any dinner to-day, I’ll be bound.”
+
+He gave them sixpence apiece and a pat on the head, and they went off
+with much respectful swinging of caps and touching of forelocks.
+
+Presently they all sat down to luncheon together. The Mole found
+himself placed next to Mr. Badger, and, as the other two were still
+deep in river-gossip from which nothing could divert them, he took the
+opportunity to tell Badger how comfortable and home-like it all felt to
+him. “Once well underground,” he said, “you know exactly where you are.
+Nothing can happen to you, and nothing can get at you. You’re entirely
+your own master, and you don’t have to consult anybody or mind what
+they say. Things go on all the same overhead, and you let ’em, and
+don’t bother about ’em. When you want to, up you go, and there the
+things are, waiting for you.”
+
+The Badger simply beamed on him. “That’s exactly what I say,” he
+replied. “There’s no security, or peace and tranquillity, except
+underground. And then, if your ideas get larger and you want to
+expand—why, a dig and a scrape, and there you are! If you feel your
+house is a bit too big, you stop up a hole or two, and there you are
+again! No builders, no tradesmen, no remarks passed on you by fellows
+looking over your wall, and, above all, no _weather_. Look at Rat, now.
+A couple of feet of flood water, and he’s got to move into hired
+lodgings; uncomfortable, inconveniently situated, and horribly
+expensive. Take Toad. I say nothing against Toad Hall; quite the best
+house in these parts, _as_ a house. But supposing a fire breaks
+out—where’s Toad? Supposing tiles are blown off, or walls sink or
+crack, or windows get broken—where’s Toad? Supposing the rooms are
+draughty—I _hate_ a draught myself—where’s Toad? No, up and out of
+doors is good enough to roam about and get one’s living in; but
+underground to come back to at last—that’s my idea of _home!_”
+
+The Mole assented heartily; and the Badger in consequence got very
+friendly with him. “When lunch is over,” he said, “I’ll take you all
+round this little place of mine. I can see you’ll appreciate it. You
+understand what domestic architecture ought to be, you do.”
+
+After luncheon, accordingly, when the other two had settled themselves
+into the chimney-corner and had started a heated argument on the
+subject of _eels_, the Badger lighted a lantern and bade the Mole
+follow him. Crossing the hall, they passed down one of the principal
+tunnels, and the wavering light of the lantern gave glimpses on either
+side of rooms both large and small, some mere cupboards, others nearly
+as broad and imposing as Toad’s dining-hall. A narrow passage at right
+angles led them into another corridor, and here the same thing was
+repeated. The Mole was staggered at the size, the extent, the
+ramifications of it all; at the length of the dim passages, the solid
+vaultings of the crammed store-chambers, the masonry everywhere, the
+pillars, the arches, the pavements. “How on earth, Badger,” he said at
+last, “did you ever find time and strength to do all this? It’s
+astonishing!”
+
+“It _would_ be astonishing indeed,” said the Badger simply, “if I _had_
+done it. But as a matter of fact I did none of it—only cleaned out the
+passages and chambers, as far as I had need of them. There’s lots more
+of it, all round about. I see you don’t understand, and I must explain
+it to you. Well, very long ago, on the spot where the Wild Wood waves
+now, before ever it had planted itself and grown up to what it now is,
+there was a city—a city of people, you know. Here, where we are
+standing, they lived, and walked, and talked, and slept, and carried on
+their business. Here they stabled their horses and feasted, from here
+they rode out to fight or drove out to trade. They were a powerful
+people, and rich, and great builders. They built to last, for they
+thought their city would last for ever.”
+
+“But what has become of them all?” asked the Mole.
+
+“Who can tell?” said the Badger. “People come—they stay for a while,
+they flourish, they build—and they go. It is their way. But we remain.
+There were badgers here, I’ve been told, long before that same city
+ever came to be. And now there are badgers here again. We are an
+enduring lot, and we may move out for a time, but we wait, and are
+patient, and back we come. And so it will ever be.”
+
+“Well, and when they went at last, those people?” said the Mole.
+
+“When they went,” continued the Badger, “the strong winds and
+persistent rains took the matter in hand, patiently, ceaselessly, year
+after year. Perhaps we badgers too, in our small way, helped a
+little—who knows? It was all down, down, down, gradually—ruin and
+levelling and disappearance. Then it was all up, up, up, gradually, as
+seeds grew to saplings, and saplings to forest trees, and bramble and
+fern came creeping in to help. Leaf-mould rose and obliterated, streams
+in their winter freshets brought sand and soil to clog and to cover,
+and in course of time our home was ready for us again, and we moved in.
+Up above us, on the surface, the same thing happened. Animals arrived,
+liked the look of the place, took up their quarters, settled down,
+spread, and flourished. They didn’t bother themselves about the
+past—they never do; they’re too busy. The place was a bit humpy and
+hillocky, naturally, and full of holes; but that was rather an
+advantage. And they don’t bother about the future, either—the future
+when perhaps the people will move in again—for a time—as may very well
+be. The Wild Wood is pretty well populated by now; with all the usual
+lot, good, bad, and indifferent—I name no names. It takes all sorts to
+make a world. But I fancy you know something about them yourself by
+this time.”
+
+“I do indeed,” said the Mole, with a slight shiver.
+
+“Well, well,” said the Badger, patting him on the shoulder, “it was
+your first experience of them, you see. They’re not so bad really; and
+we must all live and let live. But I’ll pass the word around to-morrow,
+and I think you’ll have no further trouble. Any friend of _mine_ walks
+where he likes in this country, or I’ll know the reason why!”
+
+When they got back to the kitchen again, they found the Rat walking up
+and down, very restless. The underground atmosphere was oppressing him
+and getting on his nerves, and he seemed really to be afraid that the
+river would run away if he wasn’t there to look after it. So he had his
+overcoat on, and his pistols thrust into his belt again. “Come along,
+Mole,” he said anxiously, as soon as he caught sight of them. “We must
+get off while it’s daylight. Don’t want to spend another night in the
+Wild Wood again.”
+
+“It’ll be all right, my fine fellow,” said the Otter. “I’m coming along
+with you, and I know every path blindfold; and if there’s a head that
+needs to be punched, you can confidently rely upon me to punch it.”
+
+“You really needn’t fret, Ratty,” added the Badger placidly. “My
+passages run further than you think, and I’ve bolt-holes to the edge of
+the wood in several directions, though I don’t care for everybody to
+know about them. When you really have to go, you shall leave by one of
+my short cuts. Meantime, make yourself easy, and sit down again.”
+
+The Rat was nevertheless still anxious to be off and attend to his
+river, so the Badger, taking up his lantern again, led the way along a
+damp and airless tunnel that wound and dipped, part vaulted, part hewn
+through solid rock, for a weary distance that seemed to be miles. At
+last daylight began to show itself confusedly through tangled growth
+overhanging the mouth of the passage; and the Badger, bidding them a
+hasty good-bye, pushed them hurriedly through the opening, made
+everything look as natural as possible again, with creepers, brushwood,
+and dead leaves, and retreated.
+
+They found themselves standing on the very edge of the Wild Wood. Rocks
+and brambles and tree-roots behind them, confusedly heaped and tangled;
+in front, a great space of quiet fields, hemmed by lines of hedges
+black on the snow, and, far ahead, a glint of the familiar old river,
+while the wintry sun hung red and low on the horizon. The Otter, as
+knowing all the paths, took charge of the party, and they trailed out
+on a bee-line for a distant stile. Pausing there a moment and looking
+back, they saw the whole mass of the Wild Wood, dense, menacing,
+compact, grimly set in vast white surroundings; simultaneously they
+turned and made swiftly for home, for firelight and the familiar things
+it played on, for the voice, sounding cheerily outside their window, of
+the river that they knew and trusted in all its moods, that never made
+them afraid with any amazement.
+
+As he hurried along, eagerly anticipating the moment when he would be
+at home again among the things he knew and liked, the Mole saw clearly
+that he was an animal of tilled field and hedge-row, linked to the
+ploughed furrow, the frequented pasture, the lane of evening
+lingerings, the cultivated garden-plot. For others the asperities, the
+stubborn endurance, or the clash of actual conflict, that went with
+Nature in the rough; he must be wise, must keep to the pleasant places
+in which his lines were laid and which held adventure enough, in their
+way, to last for a lifetime.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+DULCE DOMUM
+
+
+The sheep ran huddling together against the hurdles, blowing out thin
+nostrils and stamping with delicate fore-feet, their heads thrown back
+and a light steam rising from the crowded sheep-pen into the frosty
+air, as the two animals hastened by in high spirits, with much chatter
+and laughter. They were returning across country after a long day’s
+outing with Otter, hunting and exploring on the wide uplands where
+certain streams tributary to their own River had their first small
+beginnings; and the shades of the short winter day were closing in on
+them, and they had still some distance to go. Plodding at random across
+the plough, they had heard the sheep and had made for them; and now,
+leading from the sheep-pen, they found a beaten track that made walking
+a lighter business, and responded, moreover, to that small inquiring
+something which all animals carry inside them, saying unmistakably,
+“Yes, quite right; _this_ leads home!”
+
+“It looks as if we were coming to a village,” said the Mole somewhat
+dubiously, slackening his pace, as the track, that had in time become a
+path and then had developed into a lane, now handed them over to the
+charge of a well-metalled road. The animals did not hold with villages,
+and their own highways, thickly frequented as they were, took an
+independent course, regardless of church, post office, or public-house.
+
+“Oh, never mind!” said the Rat. “At this season of the year they’re all
+safe indoors by this time, sitting round the fire; men, women, and
+children, dogs and cats and all. We shall slip through all right,
+without any bother or unpleasantness, and we can have a look at them
+through their windows if you like, and see what they’re doing.”
+
+The rapid nightfall of mid-December had quite beset the little village
+as they approached it on soft feet over a first thin fall of powdery
+snow. Little was visible but squares of a dusky orange-red on either
+side of the street, where the firelight or lamplight of each cottage
+overflowed through the casements into the dark world without. Most of
+the low latticed windows were innocent of blinds, and to the lookers-in
+from outside, the inmates, gathered round the tea-table, absorbed in
+handiwork, or talking with laughter and gesture, had each that happy
+grace which is the last thing the skilled actor shall capture—the
+natural grace which goes with perfect unconsciousness of observation.
+Moving at will from one theatre to another, the two spectators, so far
+from home themselves, had something of wistfulness in their eyes as
+they watched a cat being stroked, a sleepy child picked up and huddled
+off to bed, or a tired man stretch and knock out his pipe on the end of
+a smouldering log.
+
+But it was from one little window, with its blind drawn down, a mere
+blank transparency on the night, that the sense of home and the little
+curtained world within walls—the larger stressful world of outside
+Nature shut out and forgotten—most pulsated. Close against the white
+blind hung a bird-cage, clearly silhouetted, every wire, perch, and
+appurtenance distinct and recognisable, even to yesterday’s dull-edged
+lump of sugar. On the middle perch the fluffy occupant, head tucked
+well into feathers, seemed so near to them as to be easily stroked, had
+they tried; even the delicate tips of his plumped-out plumage pencilled
+plainly on the illuminated screen. As they looked, the sleepy little
+fellow stirred uneasily, woke, shook himself, and raised his head. They
+could see the gape of his tiny beak as he yawned in a bored sort of
+way, looked round, and then settled his head into his back again, while
+the ruffled feathers gradually subsided into perfect stillness. Then a
+gust of bitter wind took them in the back of the neck, a small sting of
+frozen sleet on the skin woke them as from a dream, and they knew their
+toes to be cold and their legs tired, and their own home distant a
+weary way.
+
+Once beyond the village, where the cottages ceased abruptly, on either
+side of the road they could smell through the darkness the friendly
+fields again; and they braced themselves for the last long stretch, the
+home stretch, the stretch that we know is bound to end, some time, in
+the rattle of the door-latch, the sudden firelight, and the sight of
+familiar things greeting us as long-absent travellers from far
+over-sea. They plodded along steadily and silently, each of them
+thinking his own thoughts. The Mole’s ran a good deal on supper, as it
+was pitch-dark, and it was all a strange country for him as far as he
+knew, and he was following obediently in the wake of the Rat, leaving
+the guidance entirely to him. As for the Rat, he was walking a little
+way ahead, as his habit was, his shoulders humped, his eyes fixed on
+the straight grey road in front of him; so he did not notice poor Mole
+when suddenly the summons reached him, and took him like an electric
+shock.
+
+We others, who have long lost the more subtle of the physical senses,
+have not even proper terms to express an animal’s inter-communications
+with his surroundings, living or otherwise, and have only the word
+“smell,” for instance, to include the whole range of delicate thrills
+which murmur in the nose of the animal night and day, summoning,
+warning, inciting, repelling. It was one of these mysterious fairy
+calls from out the void that suddenly reached Mole in the darkness,
+making him tingle through and through with its very familiar appeal,
+even while yet he could not clearly remember what it was. He stopped
+dead in his tracks, his nose searching hither and thither in its
+efforts to recapture the fine filament, the telegraphic current, that
+had so strongly moved him. A moment, and he had caught it again; and
+with it this time came recollection in fullest flood.
+
+Home! That was what they meant, those caressing appeals, those soft
+touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling
+and tugging, all one way! Why, it must be quite close by him at that
+moment, his old home that he had hurriedly forsaken and never sought
+again, that day when he first found the river! And now it was sending
+out its scouts and its messengers to capture him and bring him in.
+Since his escape on that bright morning he had hardly given it a
+thought, so absorbed had he been in his new life, in all its pleasures,
+its surprises, its fresh and captivating experiences. Now, with a rush
+of old memories, how clearly it stood up before him, in the darkness!
+Shabby indeed, and small and poorly furnished, and yet his, the home he
+had made for himself, the home he had been so happy to get back to
+after his day’s work. And the home had been happy with him, too,
+evidently, and was missing him, and wanted him back, and was telling
+him so, through his nose, sorrowfully, reproachfully, but with no
+bitterness or anger; only with plaintive reminder that it was there,
+and wanted him.
+
+The call was clear, the summons was plain. He must obey it instantly,
+and go. “Ratty!” he called, full of joyful excitement, “hold on! Come
+back! I want you, quick!”
+
+“Oh, _come_ along, Mole, do!” replied the Rat cheerfully, still
+plodding along.
+
+“_Please_ stop, Ratty!” pleaded the poor Mole, in anguish of heart.
+“You don’t understand! It’s my home, my old home! I’ve just come across
+the smell of it, and it’s close by here, really quite close. And I
+_must_ go to it, I must, I must! Oh, come back, Ratty! Please, please
+come back!”
+
+The Rat was by this time very far ahead, too far to hear clearly what
+the Mole was calling, too far to catch the sharp note of painful appeal
+in his voice. And he was much taken up with the weather, for he too
+could smell something—something suspiciously like approaching snow.
+
+“Mole, we mustn’t stop now, really!” he called back. “We’ll come for it
+to-morrow, whatever it is you’ve found. But I daren’t stop now—it’s
+late, and the snow’s coming on again, and I’m not sure of the way! And
+I want your nose, Mole, so come on quick, there’s a good fellow!” And
+the Rat pressed forward on his way without waiting for an answer.
+
+Poor Mole stood alone in the road, his heart torn asunder, and a big
+sob gathering, gathering, somewhere low down inside him, to leap up to
+the surface presently, he knew, in passionate escape. But even under
+such a test as this his loyalty to his friend stood firm. Never for a
+moment did he dream of abandoning him. Meanwhile, the wafts from his
+old home pleaded, whispered, conjured, and finally claimed him
+imperiously. He dared not tarry longer within their magic circle. With
+a wrench that tore his very heartstrings he set his face down the road
+and followed submissively in the track of the Rat, while faint, thin
+little smells, still dogging his retreating nose, reproached him for
+his new friendship and his callous forgetfulness.
+
+With an effort he caught up to the unsuspecting Rat, who began
+chattering cheerfully about what they would do when they got back, and
+how jolly a fire of logs in the parlour would be, and what a supper he
+meant to eat; never noticing his companion’s silence and distressful
+state of mind. At last, however, when they had gone some considerable
+way further, and were passing some tree-stumps at the edge of a copse
+that bordered the road, he stopped and said kindly, “Look here, Mole
+old chap, you seem dead tired. No talk left in you, and your feet
+dragging like lead. We’ll sit down here for a minute and rest. The snow
+has held off so far, and the best part of our journey is over.”
+
+The Mole subsided forlornly on a tree-stump and tried to control
+himself, for he felt it surely coming. The sob he had fought with so
+long refused to be beaten. Up and up, it forced its way to the air, and
+then another, and another, and others thick and fast; till poor Mole at
+last gave up the struggle, and cried freely and helplessly and openly,
+now that he knew it was all over and he had lost what he could hardly
+be said to have found.
+
+The Rat, astonished and dismayed at the violence of Mole’s paroxysm of
+grief, did not dare to speak for a while. At last he said, very quietly
+and sympathetically, “What is it, old fellow? Whatever can be the
+matter? Tell us your trouble, and let me see what I can do.”
+
+Poor Mole found it difficult to get any words out between the upheavals
+of his chest that followed one upon another so quickly and held back
+speech and choked it as it came. “I know it’s a—shabby, dingy little
+place,” he sobbed forth at last, brokenly: “not like—your cosy
+quarters—or Toad’s beautiful hall—or Badger’s great house—but it was my
+own little home—and I was fond of it—and I went away and forgot all
+about it—and then I smelt it suddenly—on the road, when I called and
+you wouldn’t listen, Rat—and everything came back to me with a rush—and
+I _wanted_ it!—O dear, O dear!—and when you _wouldn’t_ turn back,
+Ratty—and I had to leave it, though I was smelling it all the time—I
+thought my heart would break.—We might have just gone and had one look
+at it, Ratty—only one look—it was close by—but you wouldn’t turn back,
+Ratty, you wouldn’t turn back! O dear, O dear!”
+
+Recollection brought fresh waves of sorrow, and sobs again took full
+charge of him, preventing further speech.
+
+The Rat stared straight in front of him, saying nothing, only patting
+Mole gently on the shoulder. After a time he muttered gloomily, “I see
+it all now! What a _pig_ I have been! A pig—that’s me! Just a pig—a
+plain pig!”
+
+He waited till Mole’s sobs became gradually less stormy and more
+rhythmical; he waited till at last sniffs were frequent and sobs only
+intermittent. Then he rose from his seat, and, remarking carelessly,
+“Well, now we’d really better be getting on, old chap!” set off up the
+road again, over the toilsome way they had come.
+
+“Wherever are you (hic) going to (hic), Ratty?” cried the tearful Mole,
+looking up in alarm.
+
+“We’re going to find that home of yours, old fellow,” replied the Rat
+pleasantly; “so you had better come along, for it will take some
+finding, and we shall want your nose.”
+
+“Oh, come back, Ratty, do!” cried the Mole, getting up and hurrying
+after him. “It’s no good, I tell you! It’s too late, and too dark, and
+the place is too far off, and the snow’s coming! And—and I never meant
+to let you know I was feeling that way about it—it was all an accident
+and a mistake! And think of River Bank, and your supper!”
+
+“Hang River Bank, and supper too!” said the Rat heartily. “I tell you,
+I’m going to find this place now, if I stay out all night. So cheer up,
+old chap, and take my arm, and we’ll very soon be back there again.”
+
+Still snuffling, pleading, and reluctant, Mole suffered himself to be
+dragged back along the road by his imperious companion, who by a flow
+of cheerful talk and anecdote endeavoured to beguile his spirits back
+and make the weary way seem shorter. When at last it seemed to the Rat
+that they must be nearing that part of the road where the Mole had been
+“held up,” he said, “Now, no more talking. Business! Use your nose, and
+give your mind to it.”
+
+They moved on in silence for some little way, when suddenly the Rat was
+conscious, through his arm that was linked in Mole’s, of a faint sort
+of electric thrill that was passing down that animal’s body. Instantly
+he disengaged himself, fell back a pace, and waited, all attention.
+
+The signals were coming through!
+
+Mole stood a moment rigid, while his uplifted nose, quivering slightly,
+felt the air.
+
+Then a short, quick run forward—a fault—a check—a try back; and then a
+slow, steady, confident advance.
+
+The Rat, much excited, kept close to his heels as the Mole, with
+something of the air of a sleep-walker, crossed a dry ditch, scrambled
+through a hedge, and nosed his way over a field open and trackless and
+bare in the faint starlight.
+
+Suddenly, without giving warning, he dived; but the Rat was on the
+alert, and promptly followed him down the tunnel to which his unerring
+nose had faithfully led him.
+
+It was close and airless, and the earthy smell was strong, and it
+seemed a long time to Rat ere the passage ended and he could stand
+erect and stretch and shake himself. The Mole struck a match, and by
+its light the Rat saw that they were standing in an open space, neatly
+swept and sanded underfoot, and directly facing them was Mole’s little
+front door, with “Mole End” painted, in Gothic lettering, over the
+bell-pull at the side.
+
+Mole reached down a lantern from a nail on the wall and lit it... and
+the Rat, looking round him, saw that they were in a sort of fore-court.
+A garden-seat stood on one side of the door, and on the other a roller;
+for the Mole, who was a tidy animal when at home, could not stand
+having his ground kicked up by other animals into little runs that
+ended in earth-heaps. On the walls hung wire baskets with ferns in
+them, alternating with brackets carrying plaster statuary—Garibaldi,
+and the infant Samuel, and Queen Victoria, and other heroes of modern
+Italy. Down on one side of the forecourt ran a skittle-alley, with
+benches along it and little wooden tables marked with rings that hinted
+at beer-mugs. In the middle was a small round pond containing gold-fish
+and surrounded by a cockle-shell border. Out of the centre of the pond
+rose a fanciful erection clothed in more cockle-shells and topped by a
+large silvered glass ball that reflected everything all wrong and had a
+very pleasing effect.
+
+Mole’s face-beamed at the sight of all these objects so dear to him,
+and he hurried Rat through the door, lit a lamp in the hall, and took
+one glance round his old home. He saw the dust lying thick on
+everything, saw the cheerless, deserted look of the long-neglected
+house, and its narrow, meagre dimensions, its worn and shabby
+contents—and collapsed again on a hall-chair, his nose to his paws. “O
+Ratty!” he cried dismally, “why ever did I do it? Why did I bring you
+to this poor, cold little place, on a night like this, when you might
+have been at River Bank by this time, toasting your toes before a
+blazing fire, with all your own nice things about you!”
+
+The Rat paid no heed to his doleful self-reproaches. He was running
+here and there, opening doors, inspecting rooms and cupboards, and
+lighting lamps and candles and sticking them, up everywhere. “What a
+capital little house this is!” he called out cheerily. “So compact! So
+well planned! Everything here and everything in its place! We’ll make a
+jolly night of it. The first thing we want is a good fire; I’ll see to
+that—I always know where to find things. So this is the parlour?
+Splendid! Your own idea, those little sleeping-bunks in the wall?
+Capital! Now, I’ll fetch the wood and the coals, and you get a duster,
+Mole—you’ll find one in the drawer of the kitchen table—and try and
+smarten things up a bit. Bustle about, old chap!”
+
+Encouraged by his inspiriting companion, the Mole roused himself and
+dusted and polished with energy and heartiness, while the Rat, running
+to and fro with armfuls of fuel, soon had a cheerful blaze roaring up
+the chimney. He hailed the Mole to come and warm himself; but Mole
+promptly had another fit of the blues, dropping down on a couch in dark
+despair and burying his face in his duster. “Rat,” he moaned, “how
+about your supper, you poor, cold, hungry, weary animal? I’ve nothing
+to give you—nothing—not a crumb!”
+
+“What a fellow you are for giving in!” said the Rat reproachfully.
+“Why, only just now I saw a sardine-opener on the kitchen dresser,
+quite distinctly; and everybody knows that means there are sardines
+about somewhere in the neighbourhood. Rouse yourself! pull yourself
+together, and come with me and forage.”
+
+They went and foraged accordingly, hunting through every cupboard and
+turning out every drawer. The result was not so very depressing after
+all, though of course it might have been better; a tin of sardines—a
+box of captain’s biscuits, nearly full—and a German sausage encased in
+silver paper.
+
+“There’s a banquet for you!” observed the Rat, as he arranged the
+table. “I know some animals who would give their ears to be sitting
+down to supper with us to-night!”
+
+“No bread!” groaned the Mole dolorously; “no butter, no——”
+
+“No _pâté de foie gras_, no champagne!” continued the Rat, grinning.
+“And that reminds me—what’s that little door at the end of the passage?
+Your cellar, of course! Every luxury in this house! Just you wait a
+minute.”
+
+He made for the cellar-door, and presently reappeared, somewhat dusty,
+with a bottle of beer in each paw and another under each arm,
+“Self-indulgent beggar you seem to be, Mole,” he observed. “Deny
+yourself nothing. This is really the jolliest little place I ever was
+in. Now, wherever did you pick up those prints? Make the place look so
+home-like, they do. No wonder you’re so fond of it, Mole. Tell us all
+about it, and how you came to make it what it is.”
+
+Then, while the Rat busied himself fetching plates, and knives and
+forks, and mustard which he mixed in an egg-cup, the Mole, his bosom
+still heaving with the stress of his recent emotion, related—somewhat
+shyly at first, but with more freedom as he warmed to his subject—how
+this was planned, and how that was thought out, and how this was got
+through a windfall from an aunt, and that was a wonderful find and a
+bargain, and this other thing was bought out of laborious savings and a
+certain amount of “going without.” His spirits finally quite restored,
+he must needs go and caress his possessions, and take a lamp and show
+off their points to his visitor and expatiate on them, quite forgetful
+of the supper they both so much needed; Rat, who was desperately hungry
+but strove to conceal it, nodding seriously, examining with a puckered
+brow, and saying, “wonderful,” and “most remarkable,” at intervals,
+when the chance for an observation was given him.
+
+At last the Rat succeeded in decoying him to the table, and had just
+got seriously to work with the sardine-opener when sounds were heard
+from the fore-court without—sounds like the scuffling of small feet in
+the gravel and a confused murmur of tiny voices, while broken sentences
+reached them—“Now, all in a line—hold the lantern up a bit, Tommy—clear
+your throats first—no coughing after I say one, two, three.—Where’s
+young Bill?—Here, come on, do, we’re all a-waiting——”
+
+“What’s up?” inquired the Rat, pausing in his labours.
+
+“I think it must be the field-mice,” replied the Mole, with a touch of
+pride in his manner. “They go round carol-singing regularly at this
+time of the year. They’re quite an institution in these parts. And they
+never pass me over—they come to Mole End last of all; and I used to
+give them hot drinks, and supper too sometimes, when I could afford it.
+It will be like old times to hear them again.”
+
+“Let’s have a look at them!” cried the Rat, jumping up and running to
+the door.
+
+It was a pretty sight, and a seasonable one, that met their eyes when
+they flung the door open. In the fore-court, lit by the dim rays of a
+horn lantern, some eight or ten little fieldmice stood in a semicircle,
+red worsted comforters round their throats, their fore-paws thrust deep
+into their pockets, their feet jigging for warmth. With bright beady
+eyes they glanced shyly at each other, sniggering a little, sniffing
+and applying coat-sleeves a good deal. As the door opened, one of the
+elder ones that carried the lantern was just saying, “Now then, one,
+two, three!” and forthwith their shrill little voices uprose on the
+air, singing one of the old-time carols that their forefathers composed
+in fields that were fallow and held by frost, or when snow-bound in
+chimney corners, and handed down to be sung in the miry street to
+lamp-lit windows at Yule-time.
+
+CAROL
+
+Villagers all, this frosty tide,
+Let your doors swing open wide,
+Though wind may follow, and snow beside,
+Yet draw us in by your fire to bide;
+    Joy shall be yours in the morning!
+
+Here we stand in the cold and the sleet,
+Blowing fingers and stamping feet,
+Come from far away you to greet—
+You by the fire and we in the street—
+    Bidding you joy in the morning!
+
+For ere one half of the night was gone,
+Sudden a star has led us on,
+Raining bliss and benison—
+Bliss to-morrow and more anon,
+    Joy for every morning!
+
+Goodman Joseph toiled through the snow—
+Saw the star o’er a stable low;
+Mary she might not further go—
+Welcome thatch, and litter below!
+    Joy was hers in the morning!
+
+And then they heard the angels tell
+“Who were the first to cry _Nowell?_
+Animals all, as it befell,
+In the stable where they did dwell!
+    Joy shall be theirs in the morning!”
+
+
+The voices ceased, the singers, bashful but smiling, exchanged sidelong
+glances, and silence succeeded—but for a moment only. Then, from up
+above and far away, down the tunnel they had so lately travelled was
+borne to their ears in a faint musical hum the sound of distant bells
+ringing a joyful and clangorous peal.
+
+“Very well sung, boys!” cried the Rat heartily. “And now come along in,
+all of you, and warm yourselves by the fire, and have something hot!”
+
+“Yes, come along, field-mice,” cried the Mole eagerly. “This is quite
+like old times! Shut the door after you. Pull up that settle to the
+fire. Now, you just wait a minute, while we—O, Ratty!” he cried in
+despair, plumping down on a seat, with tears impending. “Whatever are
+we doing? We’ve nothing to give them!”
+
+“You leave all that to me,” said the masterful Rat. “Here, you with the
+lantern! Come over this way. I want to talk to you. Now, tell me, are
+there any shops open at this hour of the night?”
+
+“Why, certainly, sir,” replied the field-mouse respectfully. “At this
+time of the year our shops keep open to all sorts of hours.”
+
+“Then look here!” said the Rat. “You go off at once, you and your
+lantern, and you get me——”
+
+Here much muttered conversation ensued, and the Mole only heard bits of
+it, such as—“Fresh, mind!—no, a pound of that will do—see you get
+Buggins’s, for I won’t have any other—no, only the best—if you can’t
+get it there, try somewhere else—yes, of course, home-made, no tinned
+stuff—well then, do the best you can!” Finally, there was a chink of
+coin passing from paw to paw, the field-mouse was provided with an
+ample basket for his purchases, and off he hurried, he and his lantern.
+
+The rest of the field-mice, perched in a row on the settle, their small
+legs swinging, gave themselves up to enjoyment of the fire, and toasted
+their chilblains till they tingled; while the Mole, failing to draw
+them into easy conversation, plunged into family history and made each
+of them recite the names of his numerous brothers, who were too young,
+it appeared, to be allowed to go out a-carolling this year, but looked
+forward very shortly to winning the parental consent.
+
+The Rat, meanwhile, was busy examining the label on one of the
+beer-bottles. “I perceive this to be Old Burton,” he remarked
+approvingly. “_Sensible_ Mole! The very thing! Now we shall be able to
+mull some ale! Get the things ready, Mole, while I draw the corks.”
+
+It did not take long to prepare the brew and thrust the tin heater well
+into the red heart of the fire; and soon every field-mouse was sipping
+and coughing and choking (for a little mulled ale goes a long way) and
+wiping his eyes and laughing and forgetting he had ever been cold in
+all his life.
+
+“They act plays too, these fellows,” the Mole explained to the Rat.
+“Make them up all by themselves, and act them afterwards. And very well
+they do it, too! They gave us a capital one last year, about a
+field-mouse who was captured at sea by a Barbary corsair, and made to
+row in a galley; and when he escaped and got home again, his lady-love
+had gone into a convent. Here, _you!_ You were in it, I remember. Get
+up and recite a bit.”
+
+The field-mouse addressed got up on his legs, giggled shyly, looked
+round the room, and remained absolutely tongue-tied. His comrades
+cheered him on, Mole coaxed and encouraged him, and the Rat went so far
+as to take him by the shoulders and shake him; but nothing could
+overcome his stage-fright. They were all busily engaged on him like
+watermen applying the Royal Humane Society’s regulations to a case of
+long submersion, when the latch clicked, the door opened, and the
+field-mouse with the lantern reappeared, staggering under the weight of
+his basket.
+
+There was no more talk of play-acting once the very real and solid
+contents of the basket had been tumbled out on the table. Under the
+generalship of Rat, everybody was set to do something or to fetch
+something. In a very few minutes supper was ready, and Mole, as he took
+the head of the table in a sort of a dream, saw a lately barren board
+set thick with savoury comforts; saw his little friends’ faces brighten
+and beam as they fell to without delay; and then let himself loose—for
+he was famished indeed—on the provender so magically provided, thinking
+what a happy home-coming this had turned out, after all. As they ate,
+they talked of old times, and the field-mice gave him the local gossip
+up to date, and answered as well as they could the hundred questions he
+had to ask them. The Rat said little or nothing, only taking care that
+each guest had what he wanted, and plenty of it, and that Mole had no
+trouble or anxiety about anything.
+
+They clattered off at last, very grateful and showering wishes of the
+season, with their jacket pockets stuffed with remembrances for the
+small brothers and sisters at home. When the door had closed on the
+last of them and the chink of the lanterns had died away, Mole and Rat
+kicked the fire up, drew their chairs in, brewed themselves a last
+nightcap of mulled ale, and discussed the events of the long day. At
+last the Rat, with a tremendous yawn, said, “Mole, old chap, I’m ready
+to drop. Sleepy is simply not the word. That your own bunk over on that
+side? Very well, then, I’ll take this. What a ripping little house this
+is! Everything so handy!”
+
+He clambered into his bunk and rolled himself well up in the blankets,
+and slumber gathered him forthwith, as a swathe of barley is folded
+into the arms of the reaping machine.
+
+The weary Mole also was glad to turn in without delay, and soon had his
+head on his pillow, in great joy and contentment. But ere he closed his
+eyes he let them wander round his old room, mellow in the glow of the
+firelight that played or rested on familiar and friendly things which
+had long been unconsciously a part of him, and now smilingly received
+him back, without rancour. He was now in just the frame of mind that
+the tactful Rat had quietly worked to bring about in him. He saw
+clearly how plain and simple—how narrow, even—it all was; but clearly,
+too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such
+anchorage in one’s existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new
+life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all
+they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all
+too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he
+must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this
+to come back to; this place which was all his own, these things which
+were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the
+same simple welcome.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+MR. TOAD
+
+
+It was a bright morning in the early part of summer; the river had
+resumed its wonted banks and its accustomed pace, and a hot sun seemed
+to be pulling everything green and bushy and spiky up out of the earth
+towards him, as if by strings. The Mole and the Water Rat had been up
+since dawn, very busy on matters connected with boats and the opening
+of the boating season; painting and varnishing, mending paddles,
+repairing cushions, hunting for missing boat-hooks, and so on; and were
+finishing breakfast in their little parlour and eagerly discussing
+their plans for the day, when a heavy knock sounded at the door.
+
+“Bother!” said the Rat, all over egg. “See who it is, Mole, like a good
+chap, since you’ve finished.”
+
+The Mole went to attend the summons, and the Rat heard him utter a cry
+of surprise. Then he flung the parlour door open, and announced with
+much importance, “Mr. Badger!”
+
+This was a wonderful thing, indeed, that the Badger should pay a formal
+call on them, or indeed on anybody. He generally had to be caught, if
+you wanted him badly, as he slipped quietly along a hedgerow of an
+early morning or a late evening, or else hunted up in his own house in
+the middle of the Wood, which was a serious undertaking.
+
+The Badger strode heavily into the room, and stood looking at the two
+animals with an expression full of seriousness. The Rat let his
+egg-spoon fall on the table-cloth, and sat open-mouthed.
+
+“The hour has come!” said the Badger at last with great solemnity.
+
+“What hour?” asked the Rat uneasily, glancing at the clock on the
+mantelpiece.
+
+“_Whose_ hour, you should rather say,” replied the Badger. “Why, Toad’s
+hour! The hour of Toad! I said I would take him in hand as soon as the
+winter was well over, and I’m going to take him in hand to-day!”
+
+“Toad’s hour, of course!” cried the Mole delightedly. “Hooray! I
+remember now! _We’ll_ teach him to be a sensible Toad!”
+
+“This very morning,” continued the Badger, taking an arm-chair, “as I
+learnt last night from a trustworthy source, another new and
+exceptionally powerful motor-car will arrive at Toad Hall on approval
+or return. At this very moment, perhaps, Toad is busy arraying himself
+in those singularly hideous habiliments so dear to him, which transform
+him from a (comparatively) good-looking Toad into an Object which
+throws any decent-minded animal that comes across it into a violent
+fit. We must be up and doing, ere it is too late. You two animals will
+accompany me instantly to Toad Hall, and the work of rescue shall be
+accomplished.”
+
+“Right you are!” cried the Rat, starting up. “We’ll rescue the poor
+unhappy animal! We’ll convert him! He’ll be the most converted Toad
+that ever was before we’ve done with him!”
+
+They set off up the road on their mission of mercy, Badger leading the
+way. Animals when in company walk in a proper and sensible manner, in
+single file, instead of sprawling all across the road and being of no
+use or support to each other in case of sudden trouble or danger.
+
+They reached the carriage-drive of Toad Hall to find, as the Badger had
+anticipated, a shiny new motor-car, of great size, painted a bright red
+(Toad’s favourite colour), standing in front of the house. As they
+neared the door it was flung open, and Mr. Toad, arrayed in goggles,
+cap, gaiters, and enormous overcoat, came swaggering down the steps,
+drawing on his gauntleted gloves.
+
+“Hullo! come on, you fellows!” he cried cheerfully on catching sight of
+them. “You’re just in time to come with me for a jolly—to come for a
+jolly—for a—er—jolly——”
+
+His hearty accents faltered and fell away as he noticed the stern
+unbending look on the countenances of his silent friends, and his
+invitation remained unfinished.
+
+The Badger strode up the steps. “Take him inside,” he said sternly to
+his companions. Then, as Toad was hustled through the door, struggling
+and protesting, he turned to the _chauffeur_ in charge of the new
+motor-car.
+
+“I’m afraid you won’t be wanted to-day,” he said. “Mr. Toad has changed
+his mind. He will not require the car. Please understand that this is
+final. You needn’t wait.” Then he followed the others inside and shut
+the door.
+
+“Now then!” he said to the Toad, when the four of them stood together
+in the Hall, “first of all, take those ridiculous things off!”
+
+“Shan’t!” replied Toad, with great spirit. “What is the meaning of this
+gross outrage? I demand an instant explanation.”
+
+“Take them off him, then, you two,” ordered the Badger briefly.
+
+They had to lay Toad out on the floor, kicking and calling all sorts of
+names, before they could get to work properly. Then the Rat sat on him,
+and the Mole got his motor-clothes off him bit by bit, and they stood
+him up on his legs again. A good deal of his blustering spirit seemed
+to have evaporated with the removal of his fine panoply. Now that he
+was merely Toad, and no longer the Terror of the Highway, he giggled
+feebly and looked from one to the other appealingly, seeming quite to
+understand the situation.
+
+“You knew it must come to this, sooner or later, Toad,” the Badger
+explained severely.
+
+You’ve disregarded all the warnings we’ve given you, you’ve gone on
+squandering the money your father left you, and you’re getting us
+animals a bad name in the district by your furious driving and your
+smashes and your rows with the police. Independence is all very well,
+but we animals never allow our friends to make fools of themselves
+beyond a certain limit; and that limit you’ve reached. Now, you’re a
+good fellow in many respects, and I don’t want to be too hard on you.
+I’ll make one more effort to bring you to reason. You will come with me
+into the smoking-room, and there you will hear some facts about
+yourself; and we’ll see whether you come out of that room the same Toad
+that you went in.”
+
+He took Toad firmly by the arm, led him into the smoking-room, and
+closed the door behind them.
+
+“_That’s_ no good!” said the Rat contemptuously. “_Talking_ to Toad’ll
+never cure him. He’ll _say_ anything.”
+
+They made themselves comfortable in armchairs and waited patiently.
+Through the closed door they could just hear the long continuous drone
+of the Badger’s voice, rising and falling in waves of oratory; and
+presently they noticed that the sermon began to be punctuated at
+intervals by long-drawn sobs, evidently proceeding from the bosom of
+Toad, who was a soft-hearted and affectionate fellow, very easily
+converted—for the time being—to any point of view.
+
+After some three-quarters of an hour the door opened, and the Badger
+reappeared, solemnly leading by the paw a very limp and dejected Toad.
+His skin hung baggily about him, his legs wobbled, and his cheeks were
+furrowed by the tears so plentifully called forth by the Badger’s
+moving discourse.
+
+“Sit down there, Toad,” said the Badger kindly, pointing to a chair.
+“My friends,” he went on, “I am pleased to inform you that Toad has at
+last seen the error of his ways. He is truly sorry for his misguided
+conduct in the past, and he has undertaken to give up motor-cars
+entirely and for ever. I have his solemn promise to that effect.”
+
+“That is very good news,” said the Mole gravely.
+
+“Very good news indeed,” observed the Rat dubiously, “if only—_if_
+only——”
+
+He was looking very hard at Toad as he said this, and could not help
+thinking he perceived something vaguely resembling a twinkle in that
+animal’s still sorrowful eye.
+
+“There’s only one thing more to be done,” continued the gratified
+Badger. “Toad, I want you solemnly to repeat, before your friends here,
+what you fully admitted to me in the smoking-room just now. First, you
+are sorry for what you’ve done, and you see the folly of it all?”
+
+There was a long, long pause. Toad looked desperately this way and
+that, while the other animals waited in grave silence. At last he
+spoke.
+
+“No!” he said, a little sullenly, but stoutly; “I’m _not_ sorry. And it
+wasn’t folly at all! It was simply glorious!”
+
+“What?” cried the Badger, greatly scandalised. “You backsliding animal,
+didn’t you tell me just now, in there——”
+
+“Oh, yes, yes, in _there_,” said Toad impatiently. “I’d have said
+anything in _there_. You’re so eloquent, dear Badger, and so moving,
+and so convincing, and put all your points so frightfully well—you can
+do what you like with me in _there_, and you know it. But I’ve been
+searching my mind since, and going over things in it, and I find that
+I’m not a bit sorry or repentant really, so it’s no earthly good saying
+I am; now, is it?”
+
+“Then you don’t promise,” said the Badger, “never to touch a motor-car
+again?”
+
+“Certainly not!” replied Toad emphatically. “On the contrary, I
+faithfully promise that the very first motor-car I see, poop-poop! off
+I go in it!”
+
+“Told you so, didn’t I?” observed the Rat to the Mole.
+
+“Very well, then,” said the Badger firmly, rising to his feet. “Since
+you won’t yield to persuasion, we’ll try what force can do. I feared it
+would come to this all along. You’ve often asked us three to come and
+stay with you, Toad, in this handsome house of yours; well, now we’re
+going to. When we’ve converted you to a proper point of view we may
+quit, but not before. Take him upstairs, you two, and lock him up in
+his bedroom, while we arrange matters between ourselves.”
+
+“It’s for your own good, Toady, you know,” said the Rat kindly, as
+Toad, kicking and struggling, was hauled up the stairs by his two
+faithful friends. “Think what fun we shall all have together, just as
+we used to, when you’ve quite got over this—this painful attack of
+yours!”
+
+“We’ll take great care of everything for you till you’re well, Toad,”
+said the Mole; “and we’ll see your money isn’t wasted, as it has been.”
+
+“No more of those regrettable incidents with the police, Toad,” said
+the Rat, as they thrust him into his bedroom.
+
+“And no more weeks in hospital, being ordered about by female nurses,
+Toad,” added the Mole, turning the key on him.
+
+They descended the stair, Toad shouting abuse at them through the
+keyhole; and the three friends then met in conference on the situation.
+
+“It’s going to be a tedious business,” said the Badger, sighing. “I’ve
+never seen Toad so determined. However, we will see it out. He must
+never be left an instant unguarded. We shall have to take it in turns
+to be with him, till the poison has worked itself out of his system.”
+
+They arranged watches accordingly. Each animal took it in turns to
+sleep in Toad’s room at night, and they divided the day up between
+them. At first Toad was undoubtedly very trying to his careful
+guardians. When his violent paroxysms possessed him he would arrange
+bedroom chairs in rude resemblance of a motor-car and would crouch on
+the foremost of them, bent forward and staring fixedly ahead, making
+uncouth and ghastly noises, till the climax was reached, when, turning
+a complete somersault, he would lie prostrate amidst the ruins of the
+chairs, apparently completely satisfied for the moment. As time passed,
+however, these painful seizures grew gradually less frequent, and his
+friends strove to divert his mind into fresh channels. But his interest
+in other matters did not seem to revive, and he grew apparently languid
+and depressed.
+
+One fine morning the Rat, whose turn it was to go on duty, went
+upstairs to relieve Badger, whom he found fidgeting to be off and
+stretch his legs in a long ramble round his wood and down his earths
+and burrows. “Toad’s still in bed,” he told the Rat, outside the door.
+“Can’t get much out of him, except, ‘O leave him alone, he wants
+nothing, perhaps he’ll be better presently, it may pass off in time,
+don’t be unduly anxious,’ and so on. Now, you look out, Rat! When
+Toad’s quiet and submissive and playing at being the hero of a
+Sunday-school prize, then he’s at his artfullest. There’s sure to be
+something up. I know him. Well, now, I must be off.”
+
+“How are you to-day, old chap?” inquired the Rat cheerfully, as he
+approached Toad’s bedside.
+
+He had to wait some minutes for an answer. At last a feeble voice
+replied, “Thank you so much, dear Ratty! So good of you to inquire! But
+first tell me how you are yourself, and the excellent Mole?”
+
+“O, _we’re_ all right,” replied the Rat. “Mole,” he added incautiously,
+“is going out for a run round with Badger. They’ll be out till luncheon
+time, so you and I will spend a pleasant morning together, and I’ll do
+my best to amuse you. Now jump up, there’s a good fellow, and don’t lie
+moping there on a fine morning like this!”
+
+“Dear, kind Rat,” murmured Toad, “how little you realise my condition,
+and how very far I am from ‘jumping up’ now—if ever! But do not trouble
+about me. I hate being a burden to my friends, and I do not expect to
+be one much longer. Indeed, I almost hope not.”
+
+“Well, I hope not, too,” said the Rat heartily. “You’ve been a fine
+bother to us all this time, and I’m glad to hear it’s going to stop.
+And in weather like this, and the boating season just beginning! It’s
+too bad of you, Toad! It isn’t the trouble we mind, but you’re making
+us miss such an awful lot.”
+
+“I’m afraid it _is_ the trouble you mind, though,” replied the Toad
+languidly. “I can quite understand it. It’s natural enough. You’re
+tired of bothering about me. I mustn’t ask you to do anything further.
+I’m a nuisance, I know.”
+
+“You are, indeed,” said the Rat. “But I tell you, I’d take any trouble
+on earth for you, if only you’d be a sensible animal.”
+
+“If I thought that, Ratty,” murmured Toad, more feebly than ever, “then
+I would beg you—for the last time, probably—to step round to the
+village as quickly as possible—even now it may be too late—and fetch
+the doctor. But don’t you bother. It’s only a trouble, and perhaps we
+may as well let things take their course.”
+
+“Why, what do you want a doctor for?” inquired the Rat, coming closer
+and examining him. He certainly lay very still and flat, and his voice
+was weaker and his manner much changed.
+
+“Surely you have noticed of late——” murmured Toad. “But, no—why should
+you? Noticing things is only a trouble. To-morrow, indeed, you may be
+saying to yourself, ‘O, if only I had noticed sooner! If only I had
+done something!’ But no; it’s a trouble. Never mind—forget that I
+asked.”
+
+“Look here, old man,” said the Rat, beginning to get rather alarmed,
+“of course I’ll fetch a doctor to you, if you really think you want
+him. But you can hardly be bad enough for that yet. Let’s talk about
+something else.”
+
+“I fear, dear friend,” said Toad, with a sad smile, “that ‘talk’ can do
+little in a case like this—or doctors either, for that matter; still,
+one must grasp at the slightest straw. And, by the way—while you are
+about it—I _hate_ to give you additional trouble, but I happen to
+remember that you will pass the door—would you mind at the same time
+asking the lawyer to step up? It would be a convenience to me, and
+there are moments—perhaps I should say there is _a_ moment—when one
+must face disagreeable tasks, at whatever cost to exhausted nature!”
+
+“A lawyer! O, he must be really bad!” the affrighted Rat said to
+himself, as he hurried from the room, not forgetting, however, to lock
+the door carefully behind him.
+
+Outside, he stopped to consider. The other two were far away, and he
+had no one to consult.
+
+“It’s best to be on the safe side,” he said, on reflection. “I’ve known
+Toad fancy himself frightfully bad before, without the slightest
+reason; but I’ve never heard him ask for a lawyer! If there’s nothing
+really the matter, the doctor will tell him he’s an old ass, and cheer
+him up; and that will be something gained. I’d better humour him and
+go; it won’t take very long.” So he ran off to the village on his
+errand of mercy.
+
+The Toad, who had hopped lightly out of bed as soon as he heard the key
+turned in the lock, watched him eagerly from the window till he
+disappeared down the carriage-drive. Then, laughing heartily, he
+dressed as quickly as possible in the smartest suit he could lay hands
+on at the moment, filled his pockets with cash which he took from a
+small drawer in the dressing-table, and next, knotting the sheets from
+his bed together and tying one end of the improvised rope round the
+central mullion of the handsome Tudor window which formed such a
+feature of his bedroom, he scrambled out, slid lightly to the ground,
+and, taking the opposite direction to the Rat, marched off
+lightheartedly, whistling a merry tune.
+
+It was a gloomy luncheon for Rat when the Badger and the Mole at length
+returned, and he had to face them at table with his pitiful and
+unconvincing story. The Badger’s caustic, not to say brutal, remarks
+may be imagined, and therefore passed over; but it was painful to the
+Rat that even the Mole, though he took his friend’s side as far as
+possible, could not help saying, “You’ve been a bit of a duffer this
+time, Ratty! Toad, too, of all animals!”
+
+“He did it awfully well,” said the crestfallen Rat.
+
+“He did _you_ awfully well!” rejoined the Badger hotly. “However,
+talking won’t mend matters. He’s got clear away for the time, that’s
+certain; and the worst of it is, he’ll be so conceited with what he’ll
+think is his cleverness that he may commit any folly. One comfort is,
+we’re free now, and needn’t waste any more of our precious time doing
+sentry-go. But we’d better continue to sleep at Toad Hall for a while
+longer. Toad may be brought back at any moment—on a stretcher, or
+between two policemen.”
+
+So spoke the Badger, not knowing what the future held in store, or how
+much water, and of how turbid a character, was to run under bridges
+before Toad should sit at ease again in his ancestral Hall.
+
+Meanwhile, Toad, gay and irresponsible, was walking briskly along the
+high road, some miles from home. At first he had taken by-paths, and
+crossed many fields, and changed his course several times, in case of
+pursuit; but now, feeling by this time safe from recapture, and the sun
+smiling brightly on him, and all Nature joining in a chorus of approval
+to the song of self-praise that his own heart was singing to him, he
+almost danced along the road in his satisfaction and conceit.
+
+“Smart piece of work that!” he remarked to himself chuckling. “Brain
+against brute force—and brain came out on the top—as it’s bound to do.
+Poor old Ratty! My! won’t he catch it when the Badger gets back! A
+worthy fellow, Ratty, with many good qualities, but very little
+intelligence and absolutely no education. I must take him in hand some
+day, and see if I can make something of him.”
+
+Filled full of conceited thoughts such as these he strode along, his
+head in the air, till he reached a little town, where the sign of “The
+Red Lion,” swinging across the road halfway down the main street,
+reminded him that he had not breakfasted that day, and that he was
+exceedingly hungry after his long walk. He marched into the Inn,
+ordered the best luncheon that could be provided at so short a notice,
+and sat down to eat it in the coffee-room.
+
+He was about half-way through his meal when an only too familiar sound,
+approaching down the street, made him start and fall a-trembling all
+over. The poop-poop! drew nearer and nearer, the car could be heard to
+turn into the inn-yard and come to a stop, and Toad had to hold on to
+the leg of the table to conceal his over-mastering emotion. Presently
+the party entered the coffee-room, hungry, talkative, and gay, voluble
+on their experiences of the morning and the merits of the chariot that
+had brought them along so well. Toad listened eagerly, all ears, for a
+time; at last he could stand it no longer. He slipped out of the room
+quietly, paid his bill at the bar, and as soon as he got outside
+sauntered round quietly to the inn-yard. “There cannot be any harm,” he
+said to himself, “in my only just _looking_ at it!”
+
+The car stood in the middle of the yard, quite unattended, the
+stable-helps and other hangers-on being all at their dinner. Toad
+walked slowly round it, inspecting, criticising, musing deeply.
+
+“I wonder,” he said to himself presently, “I wonder if this sort of car
+_starts_ easily?”
+
+Next moment, hardly knowing how it came about, he found he had hold of
+the handle and was turning it. As the familiar sound broke forth, the
+old passion seized on Toad and completely mastered him, body and soul.
+As if in a dream he found himself, somehow, seated in the driver’s
+seat; as if in a dream, he pulled the lever and swung the car round the
+yard and out through the archway; and, as if in a dream, all sense of
+right and wrong, all fear of obvious consequences, seemed temporarily
+suspended. He increased his pace, and as the car devoured the street
+and leapt forth on the high road through the open country, he was only
+conscious that he was Toad once more, Toad at his best and highest,
+Toad the terror, the traffic-queller, the Lord of the lone trail,
+before whom all must give way or be smitten into nothingness and
+everlasting night. He chanted as he flew, and the car responded with
+sonorous drone; the miles were eaten up under him as he sped he knew
+not whither, fulfilling his instincts, living his hour, reckless of
+what might come to him.
+
+
+“To my mind,” observed the Chairman of the Bench of Magistrates
+cheerfully, “the _only_ difficulty that presents itself in this
+otherwise very clear case is, how we can possibly make it sufficiently
+hot for the incorrigible rogue and hardened ruffian whom we see
+cowering in the dock before us. Let me see: he has been found guilty,
+on the clearest evidence, first, of stealing a valuable motor-car;
+secondly, of driving to the public danger; and, thirdly, of gross
+impertinence to the rural police. Mr. Clerk, will you tell us, please,
+what is the very stiffest penalty we can impose for each of these
+offences? Without, of course, giving the prisoner the benefit of any
+doubt, because there isn’t any.”
+
+The Clerk scratched his nose with his pen. “Some people would
+consider,” he observed, “that stealing the motor-car was the worst
+offence; and so it is. But cheeking the police undoubtedly carries the
+severest penalty; and so it ought. Supposing you were to say twelve
+months for the theft, which is mild; and three years for the furious
+driving, which is lenient; and fifteen years for the cheek, which was
+pretty bad sort of cheek, judging by what we’ve heard from the
+witness-box, even if you only believe one-tenth part of what you heard,
+and I never believe more myself—those figures, if added together
+correctly, tot up to nineteen years——”
+
+“First-rate!” said the Chairman.
+
+“—So you had better make it a round twenty years and be on the safe
+side,” concluded the Clerk.
+
+“An excellent suggestion!” said the Chairman approvingly. “Prisoner!
+Pull yourself together and try and stand up straight. It’s going to be
+twenty years for you this time. And mind, if you appear before us
+again, upon any charge whatever, we shall have to deal with you very
+seriously!”
+
+Then the brutal minions of the law fell upon the hapless Toad; loaded
+him with chains, and dragged him from the Court House, shrieking,
+praying, protesting; across the marketplace, where the playful
+populace, always as severe upon detected crime as they are sympathetic
+and helpful when one is merely “wanted,” assailed him with jeers,
+carrots, and popular catch-words; past hooting school children, their
+innocent faces lit up with the pleasure they ever derive from the sight
+of a gentleman in difficulties; across the hollow-sounding drawbridge,
+below the spiky portcullis, under the frowning archway of the grim old
+castle, whose ancient towers soared high overhead; past guardrooms full
+of grinning soldiery off duty, past sentries who coughed in a horrid,
+sarcastic way, because that is as much as a sentry on his post dare do
+to show his contempt and abhorrence of crime; up time-worn winding
+stairs, past men-at-arms in casquet and corselet of steel, darting
+threatening looks through their vizards; across courtyards, where
+mastiffs strained at their leash and pawed the air to get at him; past
+ancient warders, their halberds leant against the wall, dozing over a
+pasty and a flagon of brown ale; on and on, past the rack-chamber and
+the thumbscrew-room, past the turning that led to the private scaffold,
+till they reached the door of the grimmest dungeon that lay in the
+heart of the innermost keep. There at last they paused, where an
+ancient gaoler sat fingering a bunch of mighty keys.
+
+“Oddsbodikins!” said the sergeant of police, taking off his helmet and
+wiping his forehead. “Rouse thee, old loon, and take over from us this
+vile Toad, a criminal of deepest guilt and matchless artfulness and
+resource. Watch and ward him with all thy skill; and mark thee well,
+greybeard, should aught untoward befall, thy old head shall answer for
+his—and a murrain on both of them!”
+
+The gaoler nodded grimly, laying his withered hand on the shoulder of
+the miserable Toad. The rusty key creaked in the lock, the great door
+clanged behind them; and Toad was a helpless prisoner in the remotest
+dungeon of the best-guarded keep of the stoutest castle in all the
+length and breadth of Merry England.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN
+
+
+The Willow-Wren was twittering his thin little song, hidden himself in
+the dark selvedge of the river bank. Though it was past ten o’clock at
+night, the sky still clung to and retained some lingering skirts of
+light from the departed day; and the sullen heats of the torrid
+afternoon broke up and rolled away at the dispersing touch of the cool
+fingers of the short midsummer night. Mole lay stretched on the bank,
+still panting from the stress of the fierce day that had been cloudless
+from dawn to late sunset, and waited for his friend to return. He had
+been on the river with some companions, leaving the Water Rat free to
+keep a engagement of long standing with Otter; and he had come back to
+find the house dark and deserted, and no sign of Rat, who was doubtless
+keeping it up late with his old comrade. It was still too hot to think
+of staying indoors, so he lay on some cool dock-leaves, and thought
+over the past day and its doings, and how very good they all had been.
+
+The Rat’s light footfall was presently heard approaching over the
+parched grass. “O, the blessed coolness!” he said, and sat down, gazing
+thoughtfully into the river, silent and pre-occupied.
+
+“You stayed to supper, of course?” said the Mole presently.
+
+“Simply had to,” said the Rat. “They wouldn’t hear of my going before.
+You know how kind they always are. And they made things as jolly for me
+as ever they could, right up to the moment I left. But I felt a brute
+all the time, as it was clear to me they were very unhappy, though they
+tried to hide it. Mole, I’m afraid they’re in trouble. Little Portly is
+missing again; and you know what a lot his father thinks of him, though
+he never says much about it.”
+
+“What, that child?” said the Mole lightly. “Well, suppose he is; why
+worry about it? He’s always straying off and getting lost, and turning
+up again; he’s so adventurous. But no harm ever happens to him.
+Everybody hereabouts knows him and likes him, just as they do old
+Otter, and you may be sure some animal or other will come across him
+and bring him back again all right. Why, we’ve found him ourselves,
+miles from home, and quite self-possessed and cheerful!”
+
+“Yes; but this time it’s more serious,” said the Rat gravely. “He’s
+been missing for some days now, and the Otters have hunted everywhere,
+high and low, without finding the slightest trace. And they’ve asked
+every animal, too, for miles around, and no one knows anything about
+him. Otter’s evidently more anxious than he’ll admit. I got out of him
+that young Portly hasn’t learnt to swim very well yet, and I can see
+he’s thinking of the weir. There’s a lot of water coming down still,
+considering the time of the year, and the place always had a
+fascination for the child. And then there are—well, traps and
+things—_you_ know. Otter’s not the fellow to be nervous about any son
+of his before it’s time. And now he _is_ nervous. When I left, he came
+out with me—said he wanted some air, and talked about stretching his
+legs. But I could see it wasn’t that, so I drew him out and pumped him,
+and got it all from him at last. He was going to spend the night
+watching by the ford. You know the place where the old ford used to be,
+in by-gone days before they built the bridge?”
+
+“I know it well,” said the Mole. “But why should Otter choose to watch
+there?”
+
+“Well, it seems that it was there he gave Portly his first
+swimming-lesson,” continued the Rat. “From that shallow, gravelly spit
+near the bank. And it was there he used to teach him fishing, and there
+young Portly caught his first fish, of which he was so very proud. The
+child loved the spot, and Otter thinks that if he came wandering back
+from wherever he is—if he _is_ anywhere by this time, poor little
+chap—he might make for the ford he was so fond of; or if he came across
+it he’d remember it well, and stop there and play, perhaps. So Otter
+goes there every night and watches—on the chance, you know, just on the
+chance!”
+
+They were silent for a time, both thinking of the same thing—the
+lonely, heart-sore animal, crouched by the ford, watching and waiting,
+the long night through—on the chance.
+
+“Well, well,” said the Rat presently, “I suppose we ought to be
+thinking about turning in.” But he never offered to move.
+
+“Rat,” said the Mole, “I simply can’t go and turn in, and go to sleep,
+and _do_ nothing, even though there doesn’t seem to be anything to be
+done. We’ll get the boat out, and paddle up stream. The moon will be up
+in an hour or so, and then we will search as well as we can—anyhow, it
+will be better than going to bed and doing _nothing_.”
+
+“Just what I was thinking myself,” said the Rat. “It’s not the sort of
+night for bed anyhow; and daybreak is not so very far off, and then we
+may pick up some news of him from early risers as we go along.”
+
+They got the boat out, and the Rat took the sculls, paddling with
+caution. Out in midstream, there was a clear, narrow track that faintly
+reflected the sky; but wherever shadows fell on the water from bank,
+bush, or tree, they were as solid to all appearance as the banks
+themselves, and the Mole had to steer with judgment accordingly. Dark
+and deserted as it was, the night was full of small noises, song and
+chatter and rustling, telling of the busy little population who were up
+and about, plying their trades and vocations through the night till
+sunshine should fall on them at last and send them off to their
+well-earned repose. The water’s own noises, too, were more apparent
+than by day, its gurglings and “cloops” more unexpected and near at
+hand; and constantly they started at what seemed a sudden clear call
+from an actual articulate voice.
+
+The line of the horizon was clear and hard against the sky, and in one
+particular quarter it showed black against a silvery climbing
+phosphorescence that grew and grew. At last, over the rim of the
+waiting earth the moon lifted with slow majesty till it swung clear of
+the horizon and rode off, free of moorings; and once more they began to
+see surfaces—meadows wide-spread, and quiet gardens, and the river
+itself from bank to bank, all softly disclosed, all washed clean of
+mystery and terror, all radiant again as by day, but with a difference
+that was tremendous. Their old haunts greeted them again in other
+raiment, as if they had slipped away and put on this pure new apparel
+and come quietly back, smiling as they shyly waited to see if they
+would be recognised again under it.
+
+Fastening their boat to a willow, the friends landed in this silent,
+silver kingdom, and patiently explored the hedges, the hollow trees,
+the runnels and their little culverts, the ditches and dry water-ways.
+Embarking again and crossing over, they worked their way up the stream
+in this manner, while the moon, serene and detached in a cloudless sky,
+did what she could, though so far off, to help them in their quest;
+till her hour came and she sank earthwards reluctantly, and left them,
+and mystery once more held field and river.
+
+Then a change began slowly to declare itself. The horizon became
+clearer, field and tree came more into sight, and somehow with a
+different look; the mystery began to drop away from them. A bird piped
+suddenly, and was still; and a light breeze sprang up and set the reeds
+and bulrushes rustling. Rat, who was in the stern of the boat, while
+Mole sculled, sat up suddenly and listened with a passionate
+intentness. Mole, who with gentle strokes was just keeping the boat
+moving while he scanned the banks with care, looked at him with
+curiosity.
+
+“It’s gone!” sighed the Rat, sinking back in his seat again. “So
+beautiful and strange and new. Since it was to end so soon, I almost
+wish I had never heard it. For it has roused a longing in me that is
+pain, and nothing seems worth while but just to hear that sound once
+more and go on listening to it for ever. No! There it is again!” he
+cried, alert once more. Entranced, he was silent for a long space,
+spellbound.
+
+“Now it passes on and I begin to lose it,” he said presently. “O Mole!
+the beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy call
+of the distant piping! Such music I never dreamed of, and the call in
+it is stronger even than the music is sweet! Row on, Mole, row! For the
+music and the call must be for us.”
+
+The Mole, greatly wondering, obeyed. “I hear nothing myself,” he said,
+“but the wind playing in the reeds and rushes and osiers.”
+
+The Rat never answered, if indeed he heard. Rapt, transported,
+trembling, he was possessed in all his senses by this new divine thing
+that caught up his helpless soul and swung and dandled it, a powerless
+but happy infant in a strong sustaining grasp.
+
+In silence Mole rowed steadily, and soon they came to a point where the
+river divided, a long backwater branching off to one side. With a
+slight movement of his head Rat, who had long dropped the rudder-lines,
+directed the rower to take the backwater. The creeping tide of light
+gained and gained, and now they could see the colour of the flowers
+that gemmed the water’s edge.
+
+“Clearer and nearer still,” cried the Rat joyously. “Now you must
+surely hear it! Ah—at last—I see you do!”
+
+Breathless and transfixed the Mole stopped rowing as the liquid run of
+that glad piping broke on him like a wave, caught him up, and possessed
+him utterly. He saw the tears on his comrade’s cheeks, and bowed his
+head and understood. For a space they hung there, brushed by the purple
+loose-strife that fringed the bank; then the clear imperious summons
+that marched hand-in-hand with the intoxicating melody imposed its will
+on Mole, and mechanically he bent to his oars again. And the light grew
+steadily stronger, but no birds sang as they were wont to do at the
+approach of dawn; and but for the heavenly music all was marvellously
+still.
+
+On either side of them, as they glided onwards, the rich meadow-grass
+seemed that morning of a freshness and a greenness unsurpassable. Never
+had they noticed the roses so vivid, the willow-herb so riotous, the
+meadow-sweet so odorous and pervading. Then the murmur of the
+approaching weir began to hold the air, and they felt a consciousness
+that they were nearing the end, whatever it might be, that surely
+awaited their expedition.
+
+A wide half-circle of foam and glinting lights and shining shoulders of
+green water, the great weir closed the backwater from bank to bank,
+troubled all the quiet surface with twirling eddies and floating
+foam-streaks, and deadened all other sounds with its solemn and
+soothing rumble. In midmost of the stream, embraced in the weir’s
+shimmering arm-spread, a small island lay anchored, fringed close with
+willow and silver birch and alder. Reserved, shy, but full of
+significance, it hid whatever it might hold behind a veil, keeping it
+till the hour should come, and, with the hour, those who were called
+and chosen.
+
+Slowly, but with no doubt or hesitation whatever, and in something of a
+solemn expectancy, the two animals passed through the broken tumultuous
+water and moored their boat at the flowery margin of the island. In
+silence they landed, and pushed through the blossom and scented herbage
+and undergrowth that led up to the level ground, till they stood on a
+little lawn of a marvellous green, set round with Nature’s own
+orchard-trees—crab-apple, wild cherry, and sloe.
+
+“This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me,”
+whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. “Here, in this holy place, here
+if anywhere, surely we shall find Him!”
+
+Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that
+turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the
+ground. It was no panic terror—indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and
+happy—but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he
+knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near.
+With difficulty he turned to look for his friend and saw him at his
+side cowed, stricken, and trembling violently. And still there was
+utter silence in the populous bird-haunted branches around them; and
+still the light grew and grew.
+
+Perhaps he would never have dared to raise his eyes, but that, though
+the piping was now hushed, the call and the summons seemed still
+dominant and imperious. He might not refuse, were Death himself waiting
+to strike him instantly, once he had looked with mortal eye on things
+rightly kept hidden. Trembling he obeyed, and raised his humble head;
+and then, in that utter clearness of the imminent dawn, while Nature,
+flushed with fullness of incredible colour, seemed to hold her breath
+for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw
+the backward sweep of the curved horns, gleaming in the growing
+daylight; saw the stern, hooked nose between the kindly eyes that were
+looking down on them humourously, while the bearded mouth broke into a
+half-smile at the corners; saw the rippling muscles on the arm that lay
+across the broad chest, the long supple hand still holding the
+pan-pipes only just fallen away from the parted lips; saw the splendid
+curves of the shaggy limbs disposed in majestic ease on the sward; saw,
+last of all, nestling between his very hooves, sleeping soundly in
+entire peace and contentment, the little, round, podgy, childish form
+of the baby otter. All this he saw, for one moment breathless and
+intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived;
+and still, as he lived, he wondered.
+
+“Rat!” he found breath to whisper, shaking. “Are you afraid?”
+
+“Afraid?” murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love.
+“Afraid! Of _Him?_ O, never, never! And yet—and yet—O, Mole, I am
+afraid!”
+
+Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did
+worship.
+
+Sudden and magnificent, the sun’s broad golden disc showed itself over
+the horizon facing them; and the first rays, shooting across the level
+water-meadows, took the animals full in the eyes and dazzled them. When
+they were able to look once more, the Vision had vanished, and the air
+was full of the carol of birds that hailed the dawn.
+
+As they stared blankly in dumb misery deepening as they slowly realised
+all they had seen and all they had lost, a capricious little breeze,
+dancing up from the surface of the water, tossed the aspens, shook the
+dewy roses and blew lightly and caressingly in their faces; and with
+its soft touch came instant oblivion. For this is the last best gift
+that the kindly demi-god is careful to bestow on those to whom he has
+revealed himself in their helping: the gift of forgetfulness. Lest the
+awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and
+pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the
+after-lives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that
+they should be happy and lighthearted as before.
+
+Mole rubbed his eyes and stared at Rat, who was looking about him in a
+puzzled sort of way. “I beg your pardon; what did you say, Rat?” he
+asked.
+
+“I think I was only remarking,” said Rat slowly, “that this was the
+right sort of place, and that here, if anywhere, we should find him.
+And look! Why, there he is, the little fellow!” And with a cry of
+delight he ran towards the slumbering Portly.
+
+But Mole stood still a moment, held in thought. As one wakened suddenly
+from a beautiful dream, who struggles to recall it, and can re-capture
+nothing but a dim sense of the beauty of it, the beauty! Till that,
+too, fades away in its turn, and the dreamer bitterly accepts the hard,
+cold waking and all its penalties; so Mole, after struggling with his
+memory for a brief space, shook his head sadly and followed the Rat.
+
+Portly woke up with a joyous squeak, and wriggled with pleasure at the
+sight of his father’s friends, who had played with him so often in past
+days. In a moment, however, his face grew blank, and he fell to hunting
+round in a circle with pleading whine. As a child that has fallen
+happily asleep in its nurse’s arms, and wakes to find itself alone and
+laid in a strange place, and searches corners and cupboards, and runs
+from room to room, despair growing silently in its heart, even so
+Portly searched the island and searched, dogged and unwearying, till at
+last the black moment came for giving it up, and sitting down and
+crying bitterly.
+
+The Mole ran quickly to comfort the little animal; but Rat, lingering,
+looked long and doubtfully at certain hoof-marks deep in the sward.
+
+“Some—great—animal—has been here,” he murmured slowly and thoughtfully;
+and stood musing, musing; his mind strangely stirred.
+
+“Come along, Rat!” called the Mole. “Think of poor Otter, waiting up
+there by the ford!”
+
+Portly had soon been comforted by the promise of a treat—a jaunt on the
+river in Mr. Rat’s real boat; and the two animals conducted him to the
+water’s side, placed him securely between them in the bottom of the
+boat, and paddled off down the backwater. The sun was fully up by now,
+and hot on them, birds sang lustily and without restraint, and flowers
+smiled and nodded from either bank, but somehow—so thought the
+animals—with less of richness and blaze of colour than they seemed to
+remember seeing quite recently somewhere—they wondered where.
+
+The main river reached again, they turned the boat’s head upstream,
+towards the point where they knew their friend was keeping his lonely
+vigil. As they drew near the familiar ford, the Mole took the boat in
+to the bank, and they lifted Portly out and set him on his legs on the
+tow-path, gave him his marching orders and a friendly farewell pat on
+the back, and shoved out into mid-stream. They watched the little
+animal as he waddled along the path contentedly and with importance;
+watched him till they saw his muzzle suddenly lift and his waddle break
+into a clumsy amble as he quickened his pace with shrill whines and
+wriggles of recognition. Looking up the river, they could see Otter
+start up, tense and rigid, from out of the shallows where he crouched
+in dumb patience, and could hear his amazed and joyous bark as he
+bounded up through the osiers on to the path. Then the Mole, with a
+strong pull on one oar, swung the boat round and let the full stream
+bear them down again whither it would, their quest now happily ended.
+
+“I feel strangely tired, Rat,” said the Mole, leaning wearily over his
+oars as the boat drifted. “It’s being up all night, you’ll say,
+perhaps; but that’s nothing. We do as much half the nights of the week,
+at this time of the year. No; I feel as if I had been through something
+very exciting and rather terrible, and it was just over; and yet
+nothing particular has happened.”
+
+“Or something very surprising and splendid and beautiful,” murmured the
+Rat, leaning back and closing his eyes. “I feel just as you do, Mole;
+simply dead tired, though not body tired. It’s lucky we’ve got the
+stream with us, to take us home. Isn’t it jolly to feel the sun again,
+soaking into one’s bones! And hark to the wind playing in the reeds!”
+
+“It’s like music—far away music,” said the Mole nodding drowsily.
+
+“So I was thinking,” murmured the Rat, dreamful and languid.
+“Dance-music—the lilting sort that runs on without a stop—but with
+words in it, too—it passes into words and out of them again—I catch
+them at intervals—then it is dance-music once more, and then nothing
+but the reeds’ soft thin whispering.”
+
+“You hear better than I,” said the Mole sadly. “I cannot catch the
+words.”
+
+“Let me try and give you them,” said the Rat softly, his eyes still
+closed. “Now it is turning into words again—faint but clear—_Lest the
+awe should dwell—And turn your frolic to fret—You shall look on my
+power at the helping hour—But then you shall forget!_ Now the reeds
+take it up—_forget, forget_, they sigh, and it dies away in a rustle
+and a whisper. Then the voice returns—
+
+“_Lest limbs be reddened and rent—I spring the trap that is set—As I
+loose the snare you may glimpse me there—For surely you shall forget!_
+Row nearer, Mole, nearer to the reeds! It is hard to catch, and grows
+each minute fainter.
+
+“_Helper and healer, I cheer—Small waifs in the woodland wet—Strays I
+find in it, wounds I bind in it—Bidding them all forget!_ Nearer, Mole,
+nearer! No, it is no good; the song has died away into reed-talk.”
+
+“But what do the words mean?” asked the wondering Mole.
+
+“That I do not know,” said the Rat simply. “I passed them on to you as
+they reached me. Ah! now they return again, and this time full and
+clear! This time, at last, it is the real, the unmistakable thing,
+simple—passionate—perfect——”
+
+“Well, let’s have it, then,” said the Mole, after he had waited
+patiently for a few minutes, half-dozing in the hot sun.
+
+But no answer came. He looked, and understood the silence. With a smile
+of much happiness on his face, and something of a listening look still
+lingering there, the weary Rat was fast asleep.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+TOAD’S ADVENTURES
+
+
+When Toad found himself immured in a dank and noisome dungeon, and knew
+that all the grim darkness of a medieval fortress lay between him and
+the outer world of sunshine and well-metalled high roads where he had
+lately been so happy, disporting himself as if he had bought up every
+road in England, he flung himself at full length on the floor, and shed
+bitter tears, and abandoned himself to dark despair. “This is the end
+of everything” (he said), “at least it is the end of the career of
+Toad, which is the same thing; the popular and handsome Toad, the rich
+and hospitable Toad, the Toad so free and careless and debonair! How
+can I hope to be ever set at large again” (he said), “who have been
+imprisoned so justly for stealing so handsome a motor-car in such an
+audacious manner, and for such lurid and imaginative cheek, bestowed
+upon such a number of fat, red-faced policemen!” (Here his sobs choked
+him.) “Stupid animal that I was” (he said), “now I must languish in
+this dungeon, till people who were proud to say they knew me, have
+forgotten the very name of Toad! O wise old Badger!” (he said), “O
+clever, intelligent Rat and sensible Mole! What sound judgments, what a
+knowledge of men and matters you possess! O unhappy and forsaken Toad!”
+With lamentations such as these he passed his days and nights for
+several weeks, refusing his meals or intermediate light refreshments,
+though the grim and ancient gaoler, knowing that Toad’s pockets were
+well lined, frequently pointed out that many comforts, and indeed
+luxuries, could by arrangement be sent in—at a price—from outside.
+
+Now the gaoler had a daughter, a pleasant wench and good-hearted, who
+assisted her father in the lighter duties of his post. She was
+particularly fond of animals, and, besides her canary, whose cage hung
+on a nail in the massive wall of the keep by day, to the great
+annoyance of prisoners who relished an after-dinner nap, and was
+shrouded in an antimacassar on the parlour table at night, she kept
+several piebald mice and a restless revolving squirrel. This
+kind-hearted girl, pitying the misery of Toad, said to her father one
+day, “Father! I can’t bear to see that poor beast so unhappy, and
+getting so thin! You let me have the managing of him. You know how fond
+of animals I am. I’ll make him eat from my hand, and sit up, and do all
+sorts of things.”
+
+Her father replied that she could do what she liked with him. He was
+tired of Toad, and his sulks and his airs and his meanness. So that day
+she went on her errand of mercy, and knocked at the door of Toad’s
+cell.
+
+“Now, cheer up, Toad,” she said, coaxingly, on entering, “and sit up
+and dry your eyes and be a sensible animal. And do try and eat a bit of
+dinner. See, I’ve brought you some of mine, hot from the oven!”
+
+It was bubble-and-squeak, between two plates, and its fragrance filled
+the narrow cell. The penetrating smell of cabbage reached the nose of
+Toad as he lay prostrate in his misery on the floor, and gave him the
+idea for a moment that perhaps life was not such a blank and desperate
+thing as he had imagined. But still he wailed, and kicked with his
+legs, and refused to be comforted. So the wise girl retired for the
+time, but, of course, a good deal of the smell of hot cabbage remained
+behind, as it will do, and Toad, between his sobs, sniffed and
+reflected, and gradually began to think new and inspiring thoughts: of
+chivalry, and poetry, and deeds still to be done; of broad meadows, and
+cattle browsing in them, raked by sun and wind; of kitchen-gardens, and
+straight herb-borders, and warm snap-dragon beset by bees; and of the
+comforting clink of dishes set down on the table at Toad Hall, and the
+scrape of chair-legs on the floor as every one pulled himself close up
+to his work. The air of the narrow cell took a rosy tinge; he began to
+think of his friends, and how they would surely be able to do
+something; of lawyers, and how they would have enjoyed his case, and
+what an ass he had been not to get in a few; and lastly, he thought of
+his own great cleverness and resource, and all that he was capable of
+if he only gave his great mind to it; and the cure was almost complete.
+
+When the girl returned, some hours later, she carried a tray, with a
+cup of fragrant tea steaming on it; and a plate piled up with very hot
+buttered toast, cut thick, very brown on both sides, with the butter
+running through the holes in it in great golden drops, like honey from
+the honeycomb. The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad,
+and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on
+bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings,
+when one’s ramble was over and slippered feet were propped on the
+fender; of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy
+canaries. Toad sat up on end once more, dried his eyes, sipped his tea
+and munched his toast, and soon began talking freely about himself, and
+the house he lived in, and his doings there, and how important he was,
+and what a lot his friends thought of him.
+
+The gaoler’s daughter saw that the topic was doing him as much good as
+the tea, as indeed it was, and encouraged him to go on.
+
+“Tell me about Toad Hall,” said she. “It sounds beautiful.”
+
+“Toad Hall,” said the Toad proudly, “is an eligible self-contained
+gentleman’s residence very unique; dating in part from the fourteenth
+century, but replete with every modern convenience. Up-to-date
+sanitation. Five minutes from church, post-office, and golf-links,
+Suitable for——”
+
+“Bless the animal,” said the girl, laughing, “I don’t want to _take_
+it. Tell me something _real_ about it. But first wait till I fetch you
+some more tea and toast.”
+
+She tripped away, and presently returned with a fresh trayful; and
+Toad, pitching into the toast with avidity, his spirits quite restored
+to their usual level, told her about the boathouse, and the fish-pond,
+and the old walled kitchen-garden; and about the pig-styes, and the
+stables, and the pigeon-house, and the hen-house; and about the dairy,
+and the wash-house, and the china-cupboards, and the linen-presses (she
+liked that bit especially); and about the banqueting-hall, and the fun
+they had there when the other animals were gathered round the table and
+Toad was at his best, singing songs, telling stories, carrying on
+generally. Then she wanted to know about his animal-friends, and was
+very interested in all he had to tell her about them and how they
+lived, and what they did to pass their time. Of course, she did not say
+she was fond of animals as _pets_, because she had the sense to see
+that Toad would be extremely offended. When she said good night, having
+filled his water-jug and shaken up his straw for him, Toad was very
+much the same sanguine, self-satisfied animal that he had been of old.
+He sang a little song or two, of the sort he used to sing at his
+dinner-parties, curled himself up in the straw, and had an excellent
+night’s rest and the pleasantest of dreams.
+
+They had many interesting talks together, after that, as the dreary
+days went on; and the gaoler’s daughter grew very sorry for Toad, and
+thought it a great shame that a poor little animal should be locked up
+in prison for what seemed to her a very trivial offence. Toad, of
+course, in his vanity, thought that her interest in him proceeded from
+a growing tenderness; and he could not help half-regretting that the
+social gulf between them was so very wide, for she was a comely lass,
+and evidently admired him very much.
+
+One morning the girl was very thoughtful, and answered at random, and
+did not seem to Toad to be paying proper attention to his witty sayings
+and sparkling comments.
+
+“Toad,” she said presently, “just listen, please. I have an aunt who is
+a washerwoman.”
+
+“There, there,” said Toad, graciously and affably, “never mind; think
+no more about it. _I_ have several aunts who _ought_ to be
+washerwomen.”
+
+“Do be quiet a minute, Toad,” said the girl. “You talk too much, that’s
+your chief fault, and I’m trying to think, and you hurt my head. As I
+said, I have an aunt who is a washerwoman; she does the washing for all
+the prisoners in this castle—we try to keep any paying business of that
+sort in the family, you understand. She takes out the washing on Monday
+morning, and brings it in on Friday evening. This is a Thursday. Now,
+this is what occurs to me: you’re very rich—at least you’re always
+telling me so—and she’s very poor. A few pounds wouldn’t make any
+difference to you, and it would mean a lot to her. Now, I think if she
+were properly approached—squared, I believe is the word you animals
+use—you could come to some arrangement by which she would let you have
+her dress and bonnet and so on, and you could escape from the castle as
+the official washerwoman. You’re very alike in many
+respects—particularly about the figure.”
+
+“We’re _not_,” said the Toad in a huff. “I have a very elegant
+figure—for what I am.”
+
+“So has my aunt,” replied the girl, “for what _she_ is. But have it
+your own way. You horrid, proud, ungrateful animal, when I’m sorry for
+you, and trying to help you!”
+
+“Yes, yes, that’s all right; thank you very much indeed,” said the Toad
+hurriedly. “But look here! you wouldn’t surely have Mr. Toad of Toad
+Hall, going about the country disguised as a washerwoman!”
+
+“Then you can stop here as a Toad,” replied the girl with much spirit.
+“I suppose you want to go off in a coach-and-four!”
+
+Honest Toad was always ready to admit himself in the wrong. “You are a
+good, kind, clever girl,” he said, “and I am indeed a proud and a
+stupid toad. Introduce me to your worthy aunt, if you will be so kind,
+and I have no doubt that the excellent lady and I will be able to
+arrange terms satisfactory to both parties.”
+
+Next evening the girl ushered her aunt into Toad’s cell, bearing his
+week’s washing pinned up in a towel. The old lady had been prepared
+beforehand for the interview, and the sight of certain gold sovereigns
+that Toad had thoughtfully placed on the table in full view practically
+completed the matter and left little further to discuss. In return for
+his cash, Toad received a cotton print gown, an apron, a shawl, and a
+rusty black bonnet; the only stipulation the old lady made being that
+she should be gagged and bound and dumped down in a corner. By this not
+very convincing artifice, she explained, aided by picturesque fiction
+which she could supply herself, she hoped to retain her situation, in
+spite of the suspicious appearance of things.
+
+Toad was delighted with the suggestion. It would enable him to leave
+the prison in some style, and with his reputation for being a desperate
+and dangerous fellow untarnished; and he readily helped the gaoler’s
+daughter to make her aunt appear as much as possible the victim of
+circumstances over which she had no control.
+
+“Now it’s your turn, Toad,” said the girl. “Take off that coat and
+waistcoat of yours; you’re fat enough as it is.”
+
+Shaking with laughter, she proceeded to “hook-and-eye” him into the
+cotton print gown, arranged the shawl with a professional fold, and
+tied the strings of the rusty bonnet under his chin.
+
+“You’re the very image of her,” she giggled, “only I’m sure you never
+looked half so respectable in all your life before. Now, good-bye,
+Toad, and good luck. Go straight down the way you came up; and if any
+one says anything to you, as they probably will, being but men, you can
+chaff back a bit, of course, but remember you’re a widow woman, quite
+alone in the world, with a character to lose.”
+
+With a quaking heart, but as firm a footstep as he could command, Toad
+set forth cautiously on what seemed to be a most hare-brained and
+hazardous undertaking; but he was soon agreeably surprised to find how
+easy everything was made for him, and a little humbled at the thought
+that both his popularity, and the sex that seemed to inspire it, were
+really another’s. The washerwoman’s squat figure in its familiar cotton
+print seemed a passport for every barred door and grim gateway; even
+when he hesitated, uncertain as to the right turning to take, he found
+himself helped out of his difficulty by the warder at the next gate,
+anxious to be off to his tea, summoning him to come along sharp and not
+keep him waiting there all night. The chaff and the humourous sallies
+to which he was subjected, and to which, of course, he had to provide
+prompt and effective reply, formed, indeed, his chief danger; for Toad
+was an animal with a strong sense of his own dignity, and the chaff was
+mostly (he thought) poor and clumsy, and the humour of the sallies
+entirely lacking. However, he kept his temper, though with great
+difficulty, suited his retorts to his company and his supposed
+character, and did his best not to overstep the limits of good taste.
+
+It seemed hours before he crossed the last courtyard, rejected the
+pressing invitations from the last guardroom, and dodged the outspread
+arms of the last warder, pleading with simulated passion for just one
+farewell embrace. But at last he heard the wicket-gate in the great
+outer door click behind him, felt the fresh air of the outer world upon
+his anxious brow, and knew that he was free!
+
+Dizzy with the easy success of his daring exploit, he walked quickly
+towards the lights of the town, not knowing in the least what he should
+do next, only quite certain of one thing, that he must remove himself
+as quickly as possible from the neighbourhood where the lady he was
+forced to represent was so well-known and so popular a character.
+
+As he walked along, considering, his attention was caught by some red
+and green lights a little way off, to one side of the town, and the
+sound of the puffing and snorting of engines and the banging of shunted
+trucks fell on his ear. “Aha!” he thought, “this is a piece of luck! A
+railway station is the thing I want most in the whole world at this
+moment; and what’s more, I needn’t go through the town to get it, and
+shan’t have to support this humiliating character by repartees which,
+though thoroughly effective, do not assist one’s sense of
+self-respect.”
+
+He made his way to the station accordingly, consulted a time-table, and
+found that a train, bound more or less in the direction of his home,
+was due to start in half-an-hour. “More luck!” said Toad, his spirits
+rising rapidly, and went off to the booking-office to buy his ticket.
+
+He gave the name of the station that he knew to be nearest to the
+village of which Toad Hall was the principal feature, and mechanically
+put his fingers, in search of the necessary money, where his waistcoat
+pocket should have been. But here the cotton gown, which had nobly
+stood by him so far, and which he had basely forgotten, intervened, and
+frustrated his efforts. In a sort of nightmare he struggled with the
+strange uncanny thing that seemed to hold his hands, turn all muscular
+strivings to water, and laugh at him all the time; while other
+travellers, forming up in a line behind, waited with impatience, making
+suggestions of more or less value and comments of more or less
+stringency and point. At last—somehow—he never rightly understood
+how—he burst the barriers, attained the goal, arrived at where all
+waistcoat pockets are eternally situated, and found—not only no money,
+but no pocket to hold it, and no waistcoat to hold the pocket!
+
+To his horror he recollected that he had left both coat and waistcoat
+behind him in his cell, and with them his pocket-book, money, keys,
+watch, matches, pencil-case—all that makes life worth living, all that
+distinguishes the many-pocketed animal, the lord of creation, from the
+inferior one-pocketed or no-pocketed productions that hop or trip about
+permissively, unequipped for the real contest.
+
+In his misery he made one desperate effort to carry the thing off, and,
+with a return to his fine old manner—a blend of the Squire and the
+College Don—he said, “Look here! I find I’ve left my purse behind. Just
+give me that ticket, will you, and I’ll send the money on to-morrow?
+I’m well-known in these parts.”
+
+The clerk stared at him and the rusty black bonnet a moment, and then
+laughed. “I should think you were pretty well known in these parts,” he
+said, “if you’ve tried this game on often. Here, stand away from the
+window, please, madam; you’re obstructing the other passengers!”
+
+An old gentleman who had been prodding him in the back for some moments
+here thrust him away, and, what was worse, addressed him as his good
+woman, which angered Toad more than anything that had occurred that
+evening.
+
+Baffled and full of despair, he wandered blindly down the platform
+where the train was standing, and tears trickled down each side of his
+nose. It was hard, he thought, to be within sight of safety and almost
+of home, and to be baulked by the want of a few wretched shillings and
+by the pettifogging mistrustfulness of paid officials. Very soon his
+escape would be discovered, the hunt would be up, he would be caught,
+reviled, loaded with chains, dragged back again to prison and
+bread-and-water and straw; his guards and penalties would be doubled;
+and O, what sarcastic remarks the girl would make! What was to be done?
+He was not swift of foot; his figure was unfortunately recognisable.
+Could he not squeeze under the seat of a carriage? He had seen this
+method adopted by schoolboys, when the journey-money provided by
+thoughtful parents had been diverted to other and better ends. As he
+pondered, he found himself opposite the engine, which was being oiled,
+wiped, and generally caressed by its affectionate driver, a burly man
+with an oil-can in one hand and a lump of cotton-waste in the other.
+
+“Hullo, mother!” said the engine-driver, “what’s the trouble? You don’t
+look particularly cheerful.”
+
+“O, sir!” said Toad, crying afresh, “I am a poor unhappy washerwoman,
+and I’ve lost all my money, and can’t pay for a ticket, and I _must_
+get home to-night somehow, and whatever I am to do I don’t know. O
+dear, O dear!”
+
+“That’s a bad business, indeed,” said the engine-driver reflectively.
+“Lost your money—and can’t get home—and got some kids, too, waiting for
+you, I dare say?”
+
+“Any amount of ’em,” sobbed Toad. “And they’ll be hungry—and playing
+with matches—and upsetting lamps, the little innocents!—and
+quarrelling, and going on generally. O dear, O dear!”
+
+“Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said the good engine-driver.
+“You’re a washerwoman to your trade, says you. Very well, that’s that.
+And I’m an engine-driver, as you well may see, and there’s no denying
+it’s terribly dirty work. Uses up a power of shirts, it does, till my
+missus is fair tired of washing of ’em. If you’ll wash a few shirts for
+me when you get home, and send ’em along, I’ll give you a ride on my
+engine. It’s against the Company’s regulations, but we’re not so very
+particular in these out-of-the-way parts.”
+
+The Toad’s misery turned into rapture as he eagerly scrambled up into
+the cab of the engine. Of course, he had never washed a shirt in his
+life, and couldn’t if he tried and, anyhow, he wasn’t going to begin;
+but he thought: “When I get safely home to Toad Hall, and have money
+again, and pockets to put it in, I will send the engine-driver enough
+to pay for quite a quantity of washing, and that will be the same
+thing, or better.”
+
+The guard waved his welcome flag, the engine-driver whistled in
+cheerful response, and the train moved out of the station. As the speed
+increased, and the Toad could see on either side of him real fields,
+and trees, and hedges, and cows, and horses, all flying past him, and
+as he thought how every minute was bringing him nearer to Toad Hall,
+and sympathetic friends, and money to chink in his pocket, and a soft
+bed to sleep in, and good things to eat, and praise and admiration at
+the recital of his adventures and his surpassing cleverness, he began
+to skip up and down and shout and sing snatches of song, to the great
+astonishment of the engine-driver, who had come across washerwomen
+before, at long intervals, but never one at all like this.
+
+They had covered many and many a mile, and Toad was already considering
+what he would have for supper as soon as he got home, when he noticed
+that the engine-driver, with a puzzled expression on his face, was
+leaning over the side of the engine and listening hard. Then he saw him
+climb on to the coals and gaze out over the top of the train; then he
+returned and said to Toad: “It’s very strange; we’re the last train
+running in this direction to-night, yet I could be sworn that I heard
+another following us!”
+
+Toad ceased his frivolous antics at once. He became grave and
+depressed, and a dull pain in the lower part of his spine,
+communicating itself to his legs, made him want to sit down and try
+desperately not to think of all the possibilities.
+
+By this time the moon was shining brightly, and the engine-driver,
+steadying himself on the coal, could command a view of the line behind
+them for a long distance.
+
+Presently he called out, “I can see it clearly now! It is an engine, on
+our rails, coming along at a great pace! It looks as if we were being
+pursued!”
+
+The miserable Toad, crouching in the coal-dust, tried hard to think of
+something to do, with dismal want of success.
+
+“They are gaining on us fast!” cried the engine-driver. And the engine
+is crowded with the queerest lot of people! Men like ancient warders,
+waving halberds; policemen in their helmets, waving truncheons; and
+shabbily dressed men in pot-hats, obvious and unmistakable
+plain-clothes detectives even at this distance, waving revolvers and
+walking-sticks; all waving, and all shouting the same thing—‘Stop,
+stop, stop!’”
+
+Then Toad fell on his knees among the coals and, raising his clasped
+paws in supplication, cried, “Save me, only save me, dear kind Mr.
+Engine-driver, and I will confess everything! I am not the simple
+washerwoman I seem to be! I have no children waiting for me, innocent
+or otherwise! I am a toad—the well-known and popular Mr. Toad, a landed
+proprietor; I have just escaped, by my great daring and cleverness,
+from a loathsome dungeon into which my enemies had flung me; and if
+those fellows on that engine recapture me, it will be chains and
+bread-and-water and straw and misery once more for poor, unhappy,
+innocent Toad!”
+
+The engine-driver looked down upon him very sternly, and said, “Now
+tell the truth; what were you put in prison for?”
+
+“It was nothing very much,” said poor Toad, colouring deeply. “I only
+borrowed a motorcar while the owners were at lunch; they had no need of
+it at the time. I didn’t mean to steal it, really; but
+people—especially magistrates—take such harsh views of thoughtless and
+high-spirited actions.”
+
+The engine-driver looked very grave and said, “I fear that you have
+been indeed a wicked toad, and by rights I ought to give you up to
+offended justice. But you are evidently in sore trouble and distress,
+so I will not desert you. I don’t hold with motor-cars, for one thing;
+and I don’t hold with being ordered about by policemen when I’m on my
+own engine, for another. And the sight of an animal in tears always
+makes me feel queer and softhearted. So cheer up, Toad! I’ll do my
+best, and we may beat them yet!”
+
+They piled on more coals, shovelling furiously; the furnace roared, the
+sparks flew, the engine leapt and swung but still their pursuers slowly
+gained. The engine-driver, with a sigh, wiped his brow with a handful
+of cotton-waste, and said, “I’m afraid it’s no good, Toad. You see,
+they are running light, and they have the better engine. There’s just
+one thing left for us to do, and it’s your only chance, so attend very
+carefully to what I tell you. A short way ahead of us is a long tunnel,
+and on the other side of that the line passes through a thick wood.
+Now, I will put on all the speed I can while we are running through the
+tunnel, but the other fellows will slow down a bit, naturally, for fear
+of an accident. When we are through, I will shut off steam and put on
+brakes as hard as I can, and the moment it’s safe to do so you must
+jump and hide in the wood, before they get through the tunnel and see
+you. Then I will go full speed ahead again, and they can chase me if
+they like, for as long as they like, and as far as they like. Now mind
+and be ready to jump when I tell you!”
+
+They piled on more coals, and the train shot into the tunnel, and the
+engine rushed and roared and rattled, till at last they shot out at the
+other end into fresh air and the peaceful moonlight, and saw the wood
+lying dark and helpful upon either side of the line. The driver shut
+off steam and put on brakes, the Toad got down on the step, and as the
+train slowed down to almost a walking pace he heard the driver call
+out, “Now, jump!”
+
+Toad jumped, rolled down a short embankment, picked himself up unhurt,
+scrambled into the wood and hid.
+
+Peeping out, he saw his train get up speed again and disappear at a
+great pace. Then out of the tunnel burst the pursuing engine, roaring
+and whistling, her motley crew waving their various weapons and
+shouting, “Stop! stop! stop!” When they were past, the Toad had a
+hearty laugh—for the first time since he was thrown into prison.
+
+But he soon stopped laughing when he came to consider that it was now
+very late and dark and cold, and he was in an unknown wood, with no
+money and no chance of supper, and still far from friends and home; and
+the dead silence of everything, after the roar and rattle of the train,
+was something of a shock. He dared not leave the shelter of the trees,
+so he struck into the wood, with the idea of leaving the railway as far
+as possible behind him.
+
+After so many weeks within walls, he found the wood strange and
+unfriendly and inclined, he thought, to make fun of him. Night-jars,
+sounding their mechanical rattle, made him think that the wood was full
+of searching warders, closing in on him. An owl, swooping noiselessly
+towards him, brushed his shoulder with its wing, making him jump with
+the horrid certainty that it was a hand; then flitted off, moth-like,
+laughing its low ho! ho! ho; which Toad thought in very poor taste.
+Once he met a fox, who stopped, looked him up and down in a sarcastic
+sort of way, and said, “Hullo, washerwoman! Half a pair of socks and a
+pillow-case short this week! Mind it doesn’t occur again!” and
+swaggered off, sniggering. Toad looked about for a stone to throw at
+him, but could not succeed in finding one, which vexed him more than
+anything. At last, cold, hungry, and tired out, he sought the shelter
+of a hollow tree, where with branches and dead leaves he made himself
+as comfortable a bed as he could, and slept soundly till the morning.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+WAYFARERS ALL
+
+
+The Water Rat was restless, and he did not exactly know why. To all
+appearance the summer’s pomp was still at fullest height, and although
+in the tilled acres green had given way to gold, though rowans were
+reddening, and the woods were dashed here and there with a tawny
+fierceness, yet light and warmth and colour were still present in
+undiminished measure, clean of any chilly premonitions of the passing
+year. But the constant chorus of the orchards and hedges had shrunk to
+a casual evensong from a few yet unwearied performers; the robin was
+beginning to assert himself once more; and there was a feeling in the
+air of change and departure. The cuckoo, of course, had long been
+silent; but many another feathered friend, for months a part of the
+familiar landscape and its small society, was missing too and it seemed
+that the ranks thinned steadily day by day. Rat, ever observant of all
+winged movement, saw that it was taking daily a southing tendency; and
+even as he lay in bed at night he thought he could make out, passing in
+the darkness overhead, the beat and quiver of impatient pinions,
+obedient to the peremptory call.
+
+Nature’s Grand Hotel has its Season, like the others. As the guests one
+by one pack, pay, and depart, and the seats at the _table-d’hôte_
+shrink pitifully at each succeeding meal; as suites of rooms are
+closed, carpets taken up, and waiters sent away; those boarders who are
+staying on, _en pension_, until the next year’s full re-opening, cannot
+help being somewhat affected by all these flittings and farewells, this
+eager discussion of plans, routes, and fresh quarters, this daily
+shrinkage in the stream of comradeship. One gets unsettled, depressed,
+and inclined to be querulous. Why this craving for change? Why not stay
+on quietly here, like us, and be jolly? You don’t know this hotel out
+of the season, and what fun we have among ourselves, we fellows who
+remain and see the whole interesting year out. All very true, no doubt
+the others always reply; we quite envy you—and some other year
+perhaps—but just now we have engagements—and there’s the bus at the
+door—our time is up! So they depart, with a smile and a nod, and we
+miss them, and feel resentful. The Rat was a self-sufficing sort of
+animal, rooted to the land, and, whoever went, he stayed; still, he
+could not help noticing what was in the air, and feeling some of its
+influence in his bones.
+
+It was difficult to settle down to anything seriously, with all this
+flitting going on. Leaving the water-side, where rushes stood thick and
+tall in a stream that was becoming sluggish and low, he wandered
+country-wards, crossed a field or two of pasturage already looking
+dusty and parched, and thrust into the great sea of wheat, yellow,
+wavy, and murmurous, full of quiet motion and small whisperings. Here
+he often loved to wander, through the forest of stiff strong stalks
+that carried their own golden sky away over his head—a sky that was
+always dancing, shimmering, softly talking; or swaying strongly to the
+passing wind and recovering itself with a toss and a merry laugh. Here,
+too, he had many small friends, a society complete in itself, leading
+full and busy lives, but always with a spare moment to gossip, and
+exchange news with a visitor. Today, however, though they were civil
+enough, the field-mice and harvest-mice seemed preoccupied. Many were
+digging and tunnelling busily; others, gathered together in small
+groups, examined plans and drawings of small flats, stated to be
+desirable and compact, and situated conveniently near the Stores. Some
+were hauling out dusty trunks and dress-baskets, others were already
+elbow-deep packing their belongings; while everywhere piles and bundles
+of wheat, oats, barley, beech-mast and nuts, lay about ready for
+transport.
+
+“Here’s old Ratty!” they cried as soon as they saw him. “Come and bear
+a hand, Rat, and don’t stand about idle!”
+
+“What sort of games are you up to?” said the Water Rat severely. “You
+know it isn’t time to be thinking of winter quarters yet, by a long
+way!”
+
+“O yes, we know that,” explained a field-mouse rather shamefacedly;
+“but it’s always as well to be in good time, isn’t it? We really _must_
+get all the furniture and baggage and stores moved out of this before
+those horrid machines begin clicking round the fields; and then, you
+know, the best flats get picked up so quickly nowadays, and if you’re
+late you have to put up with _anything_; and they want such a lot of
+doing up, too, before they’re fit to move into. Of course, we’re early,
+we know that; but we’re only just making a start.”
+
+“O, bother _starts_,” said the Rat. “It’s a splendid day. Come for a
+row, or a stroll along the hedges, or a picnic in the woods, or
+something.”
+
+“Well, I _think_ not _to-day_, thank you,” replied the field-mouse
+hurriedly. “Perhaps some _other_ day—when we’ve more _time_——”
+
+The Rat, with a snort of contempt, swung round to go, tripped over a
+hat-box, and fell, with undignified remarks.
+
+“If people would be more careful,” said a field-mouse rather stiffly,
+“and look where they’re going, people wouldn’t hurt themselves—and
+forget themselves. Mind that hold-all, Rat! You’d better sit down
+somewhere. In an hour or two we may be more free to attend to you.”
+
+“You won’t be ‘free’ as you call it much this side of Christmas, I can
+see that,” retorted the Rat grumpily, as he picked his way out of the
+field.
+
+He returned somewhat despondently to his river again—his faithful,
+steady-going old river, which never packed up, flitted, or went into
+winter quarters.
+
+In the osiers which fringed the bank he spied a swallow sitting.
+Presently it was joined by another, and then by a third; and the birds,
+fidgeting restlessly on their bough, talked together earnestly and low.
+
+“What, _already_,” said the Rat, strolling up to them. “What’s the
+hurry? I call it simply ridiculous.”
+
+“O, we’re not off yet, if that’s what you mean,” replied the first
+swallow. “We’re only making plans and arranging things. Talking it
+over, you know—what route we’re taking this year, and where we’ll stop,
+and so on. That’s half the fun!”
+
+“Fun?” said the Rat; “now that’s just what I don’t understand. If
+you’ve _got_ to leave this pleasant place, and your friends who will
+miss you, and your snug homes that you’ve just settled into, why, when
+the hour strikes I’ve no doubt you’ll go bravely, and face all the
+trouble and discomfort and change and newness, and make believe that
+you’re not very unhappy. But to want to talk about it, or even think
+about it, till you really need——”
+
+“No, you don’t understand, naturally,” said the second swallow. “First,
+we feel it stirring within us, a sweet unrest; then back come the
+recollections one by one, like homing pigeons. They flutter through our
+dreams at night, they fly with us in our wheelings and circlings by
+day. We hunger to inquire of each other, to compare notes and assure
+ourselves that it was all really true, as one by one the scents and
+sounds and names of long-forgotten places come gradually back and
+beckon to us.”
+
+“Couldn’t you stop on for just this year?” suggested the Water Rat,
+wistfully. “We’ll all do our best to make you feel at home. You’ve no
+idea what good times we have here, while you are far away.”
+
+“I tried ‘stopping on’ one year,” said the third swallow. “I had grown
+so fond of the place that when the time came I hung back and let the
+others go on without me. For a few weeks it was all well enough, but
+afterwards, O the weary length of the nights! The shivering, sunless
+days! The air so clammy and chill, and not an insect in an acre of it!
+No, it was no good; my courage broke down, and one cold, stormy night I
+took wing, flying well inland on account of the strong easterly gales.
+It was snowing hard as I beat through the passes of the great
+mountains, and I had a stiff fight to win through; but never shall I
+forget the blissful feeling of the hot sun again on my back as I sped
+down to the lakes that lay so blue and placid below me, and the taste
+of my first fat insect! The past was like a bad dream; the future was
+all happy holiday as I moved southwards week by week, easily, lazily,
+lingering as long as I dared, but always heeding the call! No, I had
+had my warning; never again did I think of disobedience.”
+
+“Ah, yes, the call of the South, of the South!” twittered the other two
+dreamily. “Its songs its hues, its radiant air! O, do you remember——”
+and, forgetting the Rat, they slid into passionate reminiscence, while
+he listened fascinated, and his heart burned within him. In himself,
+too, he knew that it was vibrating at last, that chord hitherto dormant
+and unsuspected. The mere chatter of these southern-bound birds, their
+pale and second-hand reports, had yet power to awaken this wild new
+sensation and thrill him through and through with it; what would one
+moment of the real thing work in him—one passionate touch of the real
+southern sun, one waft of the authentic odor? With closed eyes he dared
+to dream a moment in full abandonment, and when he looked again the
+river seemed steely and chill, the green fields grey and lightless.
+Then his loyal heart seemed to cry out on his weaker self for its
+treachery.
+
+“Why do you ever come back, then, at all?” he demanded of the swallows
+jealously. “What do you find to attract you in this poor drab little
+country?”
+
+“And do you think,” said the first swallow, “that the other call is not
+for us too, in its due season? The call of lush meadow-grass, wet
+orchards, warm, insect-haunted ponds, of browsing cattle, of haymaking,
+and all the farm-buildings clustering round the House of the perfect
+Eaves?”
+
+“Do you suppose,” asked the second one, that you are the only living
+thing that craves with a hungry longing to hear the cuckoo’s note
+again?”
+
+“In due time,” said the third, “we shall be home-sick once more for
+quiet water-lilies swaying on the surface of an English stream. But
+to-day all that seems pale and thin and very far away. Just now our
+blood dances to other music.”
+
+They fell a-twittering among themselves once more, and this time their
+intoxicating babble was of violet seas, tawny sands, and lizard-haunted
+walls.
+
+Restlessly the Rat wandered off once more, climbed the slope that rose
+gently from the north bank of the river, and lay looking out towards
+the great ring of Downs that barred his vision further southwards—his
+simple horizon hitherto, his Mountains of the Moon, his limit behind
+which lay nothing he had cared to see or to know. To-day, to him gazing
+South with a new-born need stirring in his heart, the clear sky over
+their long low outline seemed to pulsate with promise; to-day, the
+unseen was everything, the unknown the only real fact of life. On this
+side of the hills was now the real blank, on the other lay the crowded
+and coloured panorama that his inner eye was seeing so clearly. What
+seas lay beyond, green, leaping, and crested! What sun-bathed coasts,
+along which the white villas glittered against the olive woods! What
+quiet harbours, thronged with gallant shipping bound for purple islands
+of wine and spice, islands set low in languorous waters!
+
+He rose and descended river-wards once more; then changed his mind and
+sought the side of the dusty lane. There, lying half-buried in the
+thick, cool under-hedge tangle that bordered it, he could muse on the
+metalled road and all the wondrous world that it led to; on all the
+wayfarers, too, that might have trodden it, and the fortunes and
+adventures they had gone to seek or found unseeking—out there,
+beyond—beyond!
+
+Footsteps fell on his ear, and the figure of one that walked somewhat
+wearily came into view; and he saw that it was a Rat, and a very dusty
+one. The wayfarer, as he reached him, saluted with a gesture of
+courtesy that had something foreign about it—hesitated a moment—then
+with a pleasant smile turned from the track and sat down by his side in
+the cool herbage. He seemed tired, and the Rat let him rest
+unquestioned, understanding something of what was in his thoughts;
+knowing, too, the value all animals attach at times to mere silent
+companionship, when the weary muscles slacken and the mind marks time.
+
+The wayfarer was lean and keen-featured, and somewhat bowed at the
+shoulders; his paws were thin and long, his eyes much wrinkled at the
+corners, and he wore small gold ear rings in his neatly-set well-shaped
+ears. His knitted jersey was of a faded blue, his breeches, patched and
+stained, were based on a blue foundation, and his small belongings that
+he carried were tied up in a blue cotton handkerchief.
+
+When he had rested awhile the stranger sighed, snuffed the air, and
+looked about him.
+
+“That was clover, that warm whiff on the breeze,” he remarked; “and
+those are cows we hear cropping the grass behind us and blowing softly
+between mouthfuls. There is a sound of distant reapers, and yonder
+rises a blue line of cottage smoke against the woodland. The river runs
+somewhere close by, for I hear the call of a moorhen, and I see by your
+build that you’re a freshwater mariner. Everything seems asleep, and
+yet going on all the time. It is a goodly life that you lead, friend;
+no doubt the best in the world, if only you are strong enough to lead
+it!”
+
+“Yes, it’s _the_ life, the only life, to live,” responded the Water Rat
+dreamily, and without his usual whole-hearted conviction.
+
+“I did not say exactly that,” replied the stranger cautiously; “but no
+doubt it’s the best. I’ve tried it, and I know. And because I’ve just
+tried it—six months of it—and know it’s the best, here am I, footsore
+and hungry, tramping away from it, tramping southward, following the
+old call, back to the old life, _the_ life which is mine and which will
+not let me go.”
+
+“Is this, then, yet another of them?” mused the Rat. “And where have
+you just come from?” he asked. He hardly dared to ask where he was
+bound for; he seemed to know the answer only too well.
+
+“Nice little farm,” replied the wayfarer, briefly. “Upalong in that
+direction”—he nodded northwards. “Never mind about it. I had everything
+I could want—everything I had any right to expect of life, and more;
+and here I am! Glad to be here all the same, though, glad to be here!
+So many miles further on the road, so many hours nearer to my heart’s
+desire!”
+
+His shining eyes held fast to the horizon, and he seemed to be
+listening for some sound that was wanting from that inland acreage,
+vocal as it was with the cheerful music of pasturage and farmyard.
+
+“You are not one of _us_,” said the Water Rat, “nor yet a farmer; nor
+even, I should judge, of this country.”
+
+“Right,” replied the stranger. “I’m a seafaring rat, I am, and the port
+I originally hail from is Constantinople, though I’m a sort of a
+foreigner there too, in a manner of speaking. You will have heard of
+Constantinople, friend? A fair city, and an ancient and glorious one.
+And you may have heard, too, of Sigurd, King of Norway, and how he
+sailed thither with sixty ships, and how he and his men rode up through
+streets all canopied in their honour with purple and gold; and how the
+Emperor and Empress came down and banqueted with him on board his ship.
+When Sigurd returned home, many of his Northmen remained behind and
+entered the Emperor’s body-guard, and my ancestor, a Norwegian born,
+stayed behind too, with the ships that Sigurd gave the Emperor.
+Seafarers we have ever been, and no wonder; as for me, the city of my
+birth is no more my home than any pleasant port between there and the
+London River. I know them all, and they know me. Set me down on any of
+their quays or foreshores, and I am home again.”
+
+“I suppose you go great voyages,” said the Water Rat with growing
+interest. “Months and months out of sight of land, and provisions
+running short, and allowanced as to water, and your mind communing with
+the mighty ocean, and all that sort of thing?”
+
+“By no means,” said the Sea Rat frankly. “Such a life as you describe
+would not suit me at all. I’m in the coasting trade, and rarely out of
+sight of land. It’s the jolly times on shore that appeal to me, as much
+as any seafaring. O, those southern seaports! The smell of them, the
+riding-lights at night, the glamour!”
+
+“Well, perhaps you have chosen the better way,” said the Water Rat, but
+rather doubtfully. “Tell me something of your coasting, then, if you
+have a mind to, and what sort of harvest an animal of spirit might hope
+to bring home from it to warm his latter days with gallant memories by
+the fireside; for my life, I confess to you, feels to me to-day
+somewhat narrow and circumscribed.”
+
+“My last voyage,” began the Sea Rat, “that landed me eventually in this
+country, bound with high hopes for my inland farm, will serve as a good
+example of any of them, and, indeed, as an epitome of my
+highly-coloured life. Family troubles, as usual, began it. The domestic
+storm-cone was hoisted, and I shipped myself on board a small trading
+vessel bound from Constantinople, by classic seas whose every wave
+throbs with a deathless memory, to the Grecian Islands and the Levant.
+Those were golden days and balmy nights! In and out of harbour all the
+time—old friends everywhere—sleeping in some cool temple or ruined
+cistern during the heat of the day—feasting and song after sundown,
+under great stars set in a velvet sky! Thence we turned and coasted up
+the Adriatic, its shores swimming in an atmosphere of amber, rose, and
+aquamarine; we lay in wide land-locked harbours, we roamed through
+ancient and noble cities, until at last one morning, as the sun rose
+royally behind us, we rode into Venice down a path of gold. O, Venice
+is a fine city, wherein a rat can wander at his ease and take his
+pleasure! Or, when weary of wandering, can sit at the edge of the Grand
+Canal at night, feasting with his friends, when the air is full of
+music and the sky full of stars, and the lights flash and shimmer on
+the polished steel prows of the swaying gondolas, packed so that you
+could walk across the canal on them from side to side! And then the
+food—do you like shellfish? Well, well, we won’t linger over that now.”
+
+He was silent for a time; and the Water Rat, silent too and enthralled,
+floated on dream-canals and heard a phantom song pealing high between
+vaporous grey wave-lapped walls.
+
+“Southwards we sailed again at last,” continued the Sea Rat, “coasting
+down the Italian shore, till finally we made Palermo, and there I
+quitted for a long, happy spell on shore. I never stick too long to one
+ship; one gets narrow-minded and prejudiced. Besides, Sicily is one of
+my happy hunting-grounds. I know everybody there, and their ways just
+suit me. I spent many jolly weeks in the island, staying with friends
+up country. When I grew restless again I took advantage of a ship that
+was trading to Sardinia and Corsica; and very glad I was to feel the
+fresh breeze and the sea-spray in my face once more.”
+
+“But isn’t it very hot and stuffy, down in the—hold, I think you call
+it?” asked the Water Rat.
+
+The seafarer looked at him with the suspicion of a wink. “I’m an old
+hand,” he remarked with much simplicity. “The captain’s cabin’s good
+enough for me.”
+
+“It’s a hard life, by all accounts,” murmured the Rat, sunk in deep
+thought.
+
+“For the crew it is,” replied the seafarer gravely, again with the
+ghost of a wink.
+
+“From Corsica,” he went on, “I made use of a ship that was taking wine
+to the mainland. We made Alassio in the evening, lay to, hauled up our
+wine-casks, and hove them overboard, tied one to the other by a long
+line. Then the crew took to the boats and rowed shorewards, singing as
+they went, and drawing after them the long bobbing procession of casks,
+like a mile of porpoises. On the sands they had horses waiting, which
+dragged the casks up the steep street of the little town with a fine
+rush and clatter and scramble. When the last cask was in, we went and
+refreshed and rested, and sat late into the night, drinking with our
+friends, and next morning I took to the great olive-woods for a spell
+and a rest. For now I had done with islands for the time, and ports and
+shipping were plentiful; so I led a lazy life among the peasants, lying
+and watching them work, or stretched high on the hillside with the blue
+Mediterranean far below me. And so at length, by easy stages, and
+partly on foot, partly by sea, to Marseilles, and the meeting of old
+shipmates, and the visiting of great ocean-bound vessels, and feasting
+once more. Talk of shell-fish! Why, sometimes I dream of the shell-fish
+of Marseilles, and wake up crying!”
+
+“That reminds me,” said the polite Water Rat; “you happened to mention
+that you were hungry, and I ought to have spoken earlier. Of course,
+you will stop and take your midday meal with me? My hole is close by;
+it is some time past noon, and you are very welcome to whatever there
+is.”
+
+“Now I call that kind and brotherly of you,” said the Sea Rat. “I was
+indeed hungry when I sat down, and ever since I inadvertently happened
+to mention shell-fish, my pangs have been extreme. But couldn’t you
+fetch it along out here? I am none too fond of going under hatches,
+unless I’m obliged to; and then, while we eat, I could tell you more
+concerning my voyages and the pleasant life I lead—at least, it is very
+pleasant to me, and by your attention I judge it commends itself to
+you; whereas if we go indoors it is a hundred to one that I shall
+presently fall asleep.”
+
+“That is indeed an excellent suggestion,” said the Water Rat, and
+hurried off home. There he got out the luncheon-basket and packed a
+simple meal, in which, remembering the stranger’s origin and
+preferences, he took care to include a yard of long French bread, a
+sausage out of which the garlic sang, some cheese which lay down and
+cried, and a long-necked straw-covered flask wherein lay bottled
+sunshine shed and garnered on far Southern slopes. Thus laden, he
+returned with all speed, and blushed for pleasure at the old seaman’s
+commendations of his taste and judgment, as together they unpacked the
+basket and laid out the contents on the grass by the roadside.
+
+The Sea Rat, as soon as his hunger was somewhat assuaged, continued the
+history of his latest voyage, conducting his simple hearer from port to
+port of Spain, landing him at Lisbon, Oporto, and Bordeaux, introducing
+him to the pleasant harbours of Cornwall and Devon, and so up the
+Channel to that final quayside, where, landing after winds long
+contrary, storm-driven and weather-beaten, he had caught the first
+magical hints and heraldings of another Spring, and, fired by these,
+had sped on a long tramp inland, hungry for the experiment of life on
+some quiet farmstead, very far from the weary beating of any sea.
+
+Spell-bound and quivering with excitement, the Water Rat followed the
+Adventurer league by league, over stormy bays, through crowded
+roadsteads, across harbour bars on a racing tide, up winding rivers
+that hid their busy little towns round a sudden turn; and left him with
+a regretful sigh planted at his dull inland farm, about which he
+desired to hear nothing.
+
+By this time their meal was over, and the Seafarer, refreshed and
+strengthened, his voice more vibrant, his eye lit with a brightness
+that seemed caught from some far-away sea-beacon, filled his glass with
+the red and glowing vintage of the South, and, leaning towards the
+Water Rat, compelled his gaze and held him, body and soul, while he
+talked. Those eyes were of the changing foam-streaked grey-green of
+leaping Northern seas; in the glass shone a hot ruby that seemed the
+very heart of the South, beating for him who had courage to respond to
+its pulsation. The twin lights, the shifting grey and the steadfast
+red, mastered the Water Rat and held him bound, fascinated, powerless.
+The quiet world outside their rays receded far away and ceased to be.
+And the talk, the wonderful talk flowed on—or was it speech entirely,
+or did it pass at times into song—chanty of the sailors weighing the
+dripping anchor, sonorous hum of the shrouds in a tearing North-Easter,
+ballad of the fisherman hauling his nets at sundown against an apricot
+sky, chords of guitar and mandoline from gondola or caique? Did it
+change into the cry of the wind, plaintive at first, angrily shrill as
+it freshened, rising to a tearing whistle, sinking to a musical trickle
+of air from the leech of the bellying sail? All these sounds the
+spell-bound listener seemed to hear, and with them the hungry complaint
+of the gulls and the sea-mews, the soft thunder of the breaking wave,
+the cry of the protesting shingle. Back into speech again it passed,
+and with beating heart he was following the adventures of a dozen
+seaports, the fights, the escapes, the rallies, the comradeships, the
+gallant undertakings; or he searched islands for treasure, fished in
+still lagoons and dozed day-long on warm white sand. Of deep-sea
+fishings he heard tell, and mighty silver gatherings of the mile-long
+net; of sudden perils, noise of breakers on a moonless night, or the
+tall bows of the great liner taking shape overhead through the fog; of
+the merry home-coming, the headland rounded, the harbour lights opened
+out; the groups seen dimly on the quay, the cheery hail, the splash of
+the hawser; the trudge up the steep little street towards the
+comforting glow of red-curtained windows.
+
+Lastly, in his waking dream it seemed to him that the Adventurer had
+risen to his feet, but was still speaking, still holding him fast with
+his sea-grey eyes.
+
+“And now,” he was softly saying, “I take to the road again, holding on
+southwestwards for many a long and dusty day; till at last I reach the
+little grey sea town I know so well, that clings along one steep side
+of the harbour. There through dark doorways you look down flights of
+stone steps, overhung by great pink tufts of valerian and ending in a
+patch of sparkling blue water. The little boats that lie tethered to
+the rings and stanchions of the old sea-wall are gaily painted as those
+I clambered in and out of in my own childhood; the salmon leap on the
+flood tide, schools of mackerel flash and play past quay-sides and
+foreshores, and by the windows the great vessels glide, night and day,
+up to their moorings or forth to the open sea. There, sooner or later,
+the ships of all seafaring nations arrive; and there, at its destined
+hour, the ship of my choice will let go its anchor. I shall take my
+time, I shall tarry and bide, till at last the right one lies waiting
+for me, warped out into midstream, loaded low, her bowsprit pointing
+down harbour. I shall slip on board, by boat or along hawser; and then
+one morning I shall wake to the song and tramp of the sailors, the
+clink of the capstan, and the rattle of the anchor-chain coming merrily
+in. We shall break out the jib and the foresail, the white houses on
+the harbour side will glide slowly past us as she gathers steering-way,
+and the voyage will have begun! As she forges towards the headland she
+will clothe herself with canvas; and then, once outside, the sounding
+slap of great green seas as she heels to the wind, pointing South!
+
+“And you, you will come too, young brother; for the days pass, and
+never return, and the South still waits for you. Take the Adventure,
+heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes! ’Tis but a
+banging of the door behind you, a blithesome step forward, and you are
+out of the old life and into the new! Then some day, some day long
+hence, jog home here if you will, when the cup has been drained and the
+play has been played, and sit down by your quiet river with a store of
+goodly memories for company. You can easily overtake me on the road,
+for you are young, and I am ageing and go softly. I will linger, and
+look back; and at last I will surely see you coming, eager and
+light-hearted, with all the South in your face!”
+
+The voice died away and ceased as an insect’s tiny trumpet dwindles
+swiftly into silence; and the Water Rat, paralysed and staring, saw at
+last but a distant speck on the white surface of the road.
+
+Mechanically he rose and proceeded to repack the luncheon-basket,
+carefully and without haste. Mechanically he returned home, gathered
+together a few small necessaries and special treasures he was fond of,
+and put them in a satchel; acting with slow deliberation, moving about
+the room like a sleep-walker; listening ever with parted lips. He swung
+the satchel over his shoulder, carefully selected a stout stick for his
+wayfaring, and with no haste, but with no hesitation at all, he stepped
+across the threshold just as the Mole appeared at the door.
+
+“Why, where are you off to, Ratty?” asked the Mole in great surprise,
+grasping him by the arm.
+
+“Going South, with the rest of them,” murmured the Rat in a dreamy
+monotone, never looking at him. “Seawards first and then on shipboard,
+and so to the shores that are calling me!”
+
+He pressed resolutely forward, still without haste, but with dogged
+fixity of purpose; but the Mole, now thoroughly alarmed, placed himself
+in front of him, and looking into his eyes saw that they were glazed
+and set and turned a streaked and shifting grey—not his friend’s eyes,
+but the eyes of some other animal! Grappling with him strongly he
+dragged him inside, threw him down, and held him.
+
+The Rat struggled desperately for a few moments, and then his strength
+seemed suddenly to leave him, and he lay still and exhausted, with
+closed eyes, trembling. Presently the Mole assisted him to rise and
+placed him in a chair, where he sat collapsed and shrunken into
+himself, his body shaken by a violent shivering, passing in time into
+an hysterical fit of dry sobbing. Mole made the door fast, threw the
+satchel into a drawer and locked it, and sat down quietly on the table
+by his friend, waiting for the strange seizure to pass. Gradually the
+Rat sank into a troubled doze, broken by starts and confused murmurings
+of things strange and wild and foreign to the unenlightened Mole; and
+from that he passed into a deep slumber.
+
+Very anxious in mind, the Mole left him for a time and busied himself
+with household matters; and it was getting dark when he returned to the
+parlour and found the Rat where he had left him, wide awake indeed, but
+listless, silent, and dejected. He took one hasty glance at his eyes;
+found them, to his great gratification, clear and dark and brown again
+as before; and then sat down and tried to cheer him up and help him to
+relate what had happened to him.
+
+Poor Ratty did his best, by degrees, to explain things; but how could
+he put into cold words what had mostly been suggestion? How recall, for
+another’s benefit, the haunting sea voices that had sung to him, how
+reproduce at second-hand the magic of the Seafarer’s hundred
+reminiscences? Even to himself, now the spell was broken and the
+glamour gone, he found it difficult to account for what had seemed,
+some hours ago, the inevitable and only thing. It is not surprising,
+then, that he failed to convey to the Mole any clear idea of what he
+had been through that day.
+
+To the Mole this much was plain: the fit, or attack, had passed away,
+and had left him sane again, though shaken and cast down by the
+reaction. But he seemed to have lost all interest for the time in the
+things that went to make up his daily life, as well as in all pleasant
+forecastings of the altered days and doings that the changing season
+was surely bringing.
+
+Casually, then, and with seeming indifference, the Mole turned his talk
+to the harvest that was being gathered in, the towering wagons and
+their straining teams, the growing ricks, and the large moon rising
+over bare acres dotted with sheaves. He talked of the reddening apples
+around, of the browning nuts, of jams and preserves and the distilling
+of cordials; till by easy stages such as these he reached midwinter,
+its hearty joys and its snug home life, and then he became simply
+lyrical.
+
+By degrees the Rat began to sit up and to join in. His dull eye
+brightened, and he lost some of his listening air.
+
+Presently the tactful Mole slipped away and returned with a pencil and
+a few half-sheets of paper, which he placed on the table at his
+friend’s elbow.
+
+“It’s quite a long time since you did any poetry,” he remarked. “You
+might have a try at it this evening, instead of—well, brooding over
+things so much. I’ve an idea that you’ll feel a lot better when you’ve
+got something jotted down—if it’s only just the rhymes.”
+
+The Rat pushed the paper away from him wearily, but the discreet Mole
+took occasion to leave the room, and when he peeped in again some time
+later, the Rat was absorbed and deaf to the world; alternately
+scribbling and sucking the top of his pencil. It is true that he sucked
+a good deal more than he scribbled; but it was joy to the Mole to know
+that the cure had at least begun.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF TOAD
+
+
+The front door of the hollow tree faced eastwards, so Toad was called
+at an early hour; partly by the bright sunlight streaming in on him,
+partly by the exceeding coldness of his toes, which made him dream that
+he was at home in bed in his own handsome room with the Tudor window,
+on a cold winter’s night, and his bedclothes had got up, grumbling and
+protesting they couldn’t stand the cold any longer, and had run
+downstairs to the kitchen fire to warm themselves; and he had followed,
+on bare feet, along miles and miles of icy stone-paved passages,
+arguing and beseeching them to be reasonable. He would probably have
+been aroused much earlier, had he not slept for some weeks on straw
+over stone flags, and almost forgotten the friendly feeling of thick
+blankets pulled well up round the chin.
+
+Sitting up, he rubbed his eyes first and his complaining toes next,
+wondered for a moment where he was, looking round for familiar stone
+wall and little barred window; then, with a leap of the heart,
+remembered everything—his escape, his flight, his pursuit; remembered,
+first and best thing of all, that he was free!
+
+Free! The word and the thought alone were worth fifty blankets. He was
+warm from end to end as he thought of the jolly world outside, waiting
+eagerly for him to make his triumphal entrance, ready to serve him and
+play up to him, anxious to help him and to keep him company, as it
+always had been in days of old before misfortune fell upon him. He
+shook himself and combed the dry leaves out of his hair with his
+fingers; and, his toilet complete, marched forth into the comfortable
+morning sun, cold but confident, hungry but hopeful, all nervous
+terrors of yesterday dispelled by rest and sleep and frank and
+heartening sunshine.
+
+He had the world all to himself, that early summer morning. The dewy
+woodland, as he threaded it, was solitary and still: the green fields
+that succeeded the trees were his own to do as he liked with; the road
+itself, when he reached it, in that loneliness that was everywhere,
+seemed, like a stray dog, to be looking anxiously for company. Toad,
+however, was looking for something that could talk, and tell him
+clearly which way he ought to go. It is all very well, when you have a
+light heart, and a clear conscience, and money in your pocket, and
+nobody scouring the country for you to drag you off to prison again, to
+follow where the road beckons and points, not caring whither. The
+practical Toad cared very much indeed, and he could have kicked the
+road for its helpless silence when every minute was of importance to
+him.
+
+The reserved rustic road was presently joined by a shy little brother
+in the shape of a canal, which took its hand and ambled along by its
+side in perfect confidence, but with the same tongue-tied,
+uncommunicative attitude towards strangers. “Bother them!” said Toad to
+himself. “But, anyhow, one thing’s clear. They must both be coming
+_from_ somewhere, and going _to_ somewhere. You can’t get over that.
+Toad, my boy!” So he marched on patiently by the water’s edge.
+
+Round a bend in the canal came plodding a solitary horse, stooping
+forward as if in anxious thought. From rope traces attached to his
+collar stretched a long line, taut, but dipping with his stride, the
+further part of it dripping pearly drops. Toad let the horse pass, and
+stood waiting for what the fates were sending him.
+
+With a pleasant swirl of quiet water at its blunt bow the barge slid up
+alongside of him, its gaily painted gunwale level with the towing-path,
+its sole occupant a big stout woman wearing a linen sun-bonnet, one
+brawny arm laid along the tiller.
+
+“A nice morning, ma’am!” she remarked to Toad, as she drew up level
+with him.
+
+“I dare say it is, ma’am!” responded Toad politely, as he walked along
+the tow-path abreast of her. “I dare it _is_ a nice morning to them
+that’s not in sore trouble, like what I am. Here’s my married daughter,
+she sends off to me post-haste to come to her at once; so off I comes,
+not knowing what may be happening or going to happen, but fearing the
+worst, as you will understand, ma’am, if you’re a mother, too. And I’ve
+left my business to look after itself—I’m in the washing and laundering
+line, you must know, ma’am—and I’ve left my young children to look
+after themselves, and a more mischievous and troublesome set of young
+imps doesn’t exist, ma’am; and I’ve lost all my money, and lost my way,
+and as for what may be happening to my married daughter, why, I don’t
+like to think of it, ma’am!”
+
+“Where might your married daughter be living, ma’am?” asked the
+barge-woman.
+
+“She lives near to the river, ma’am,” replied Toad. “Close to a fine
+house called Toad Hall, that’s somewheres hereabouts in these parts.
+Perhaps you may have heard of it.”
+
+“Toad Hall? Why, I’m going that way myself,” replied the barge-woman.
+“This canal joins the river some miles further on, a little above Toad
+Hall; and then it’s an easy walk. You come along in the barge with me,
+and I’ll give you a lift.”
+
+She steered the barge close to the bank, and Toad, with many humble and
+grateful acknowledgments, stepped lightly on board and sat down with
+great satisfaction. “Toad’s luck again!” thought he. “I always come out
+on top!”
+
+“So you’re in the washing business, ma’am?” said the barge-woman
+politely, as they glided along. “And a very good business you’ve got
+too, I dare say, if I’m not making too free in saying so.”
+
+“Finest business in the whole country,” said Toad airily. “All the
+gentry come to me—wouldn’t go to any one else if they were paid, they
+know me so well. You see, I understand my work thoroughly, and attend
+to it all myself. Washing, ironing, clear-starching, making up gents’
+fine shirts for evening wear—everything’s done under my own eye!”
+
+“But surely you don’t _do_ all that work yourself, ma’am?” asked the
+barge-woman respectfully.
+
+“O, I have girls,” said Toad lightly: “twenty girls or thereabouts,
+always at work. But you know what _girls_ are, ma’am! Nasty little
+hussies, that’s what _I_ call ’em!”
+
+“So do I, too,” said the barge-woman with great heartiness. “But I dare
+say you set yours to rights, the idle trollops! And are you _very_ fond
+of washing?”
+
+“I love it,” said Toad. “I simply dote on it. Never so happy as when
+I’ve got both arms in the wash-tub. But, then, it comes so easy to me!
+No trouble at all! A real pleasure, I assure you, ma’am!”
+
+“What a bit of luck, meeting you!” observed the barge-woman,
+thoughtfully. “A regular piece of good fortune for both of us!”
+
+“Why, what do you mean?” asked Toad, nervously.
+
+“Well, look at me, now,” replied the barge-woman. “_I_ like washing,
+too, just the same as you do; and for that matter, whether I like it or
+not I have got to do all my own, naturally, moving about as I do. Now
+my husband, he’s such a fellow for shirking his work and leaving the
+barge to me, that never a moment do I get for seeing to my own affairs.
+By rights he ought to be here now, either steering or attending to the
+horse, though luckily the horse has sense enough to attend to himself.
+Instead of which, he’s gone off with the dog, to see if they can’t pick
+up a rabbit for dinner somewhere. Says he’ll catch me up at the next
+lock. Well, that’s as may be—I don’t trust him, once he gets off with
+that dog, who’s worse than he is. But meantime, how am I to get on with
+my washing?”
+
+“O, never mind about the washing,” said Toad, not liking the subject.
+“Try and fix your mind on that rabbit. A nice fat young rabbit, I’ll be
+bound. Got any onions?”
+
+“I can’t fix my mind on anything but my washing,” said the barge-woman,
+“and I wonder you can be talking of rabbits, with such a joyful
+prospect before you. There’s a heap of things of mine that you’ll find
+in a corner of the cabin. If you’ll just take one or two of the most
+necessary sort—I won’t venture to describe them to a lady like you, but
+you’ll recognise them at a glance—and put them through the wash-tub as
+we go along, why, it’ll be a pleasure to you, as you rightly say, and a
+real help to me. You’ll find a tub handy, and soap, and a kettle on the
+stove, and a bucket to haul up water from the canal with. Then I shall
+know you’re enjoying yourself, instead of sitting here idle, looking at
+the scenery and yawning your head off.”
+
+“Here, you let me steer!” said Toad, now thoroughly frightened, “and
+then you can get on with your washing your own way. I might spoil your
+things, or not do ’em as you like. I’m more used to gentlemen’s things
+myself. It’s my special line.”
+
+“Let you steer?” replied the barge-woman, laughing. “It takes some
+practice to steer a barge properly. Besides, it’s dull work, and I want
+you to be happy. No, you shall do the washing you are so fond of, and
+I’ll stick to the steering that I understand. Don’t try and deprive me
+of the pleasure of giving you a treat!”
+
+Toad was fairly cornered. He looked for escape this way and that, saw
+that he was too far from the bank for a flying leap, and sullenly
+resigned himself to his fate. “If it comes to that,” he thought in
+desperation, “I suppose any fool can _wash!_”
+
+He fetched tub, soap, and other necessaries from the cabin, selected a
+few garments at random, tried to recollect what he had seen in casual
+glances through laundry windows, and set to.
+
+A long half-hour passed, and every minute of it saw Toad getting
+crosser and crosser. Nothing that he could do to the things seemed to
+please them or do them good. He tried coaxing, he tried slapping, he
+tried punching; they smiled back at him out of the tub unconverted,
+happy in their original sin. Once or twice he looked nervously over his
+shoulder at the barge-woman, but she appeared to be gazing out in front
+of her, absorbed in her steering. His back ached badly, and he noticed
+with dismay that his paws were beginning to get all crinkly. Now Toad
+was very proud of his paws. He muttered under his breath words that
+should never pass the lips of either washerwomen or Toads; and lost the
+soap, for the fiftieth time.
+
+A burst of laughter made him straighten himself and look round. The
+barge-woman was leaning back and laughing unrestrainedly, till the
+tears ran down her cheeks.
+
+“I’ve been watching you all the time,” she gasped. “I thought you must
+be a humbug all along, from the conceited way you talked. Pretty
+washerwoman you are! Never washed so much as a dish-clout in your life,
+I’ll lay!”
+
+Toad’s temper which had been simmering viciously for some time, now
+fairly boiled over, and he lost all control of himself.
+
+“You common, low, _fat_ barge-woman!” he shouted; “don’t you dare to
+talk to your betters like that! Washerwoman indeed! I would have you to
+know that I am a Toad, a very well-known, respected, distinguished
+Toad! I may be under a bit of a cloud at present, but I will _not_ be
+laughed at by a bargewoman!”
+
+The woman moved nearer to him and peered under his bonnet keenly and
+closely. “Why, so you are!” she cried. “Well, I never! A horrid, nasty,
+crawly Toad! And in my nice clean barge, too! Now that is a thing that
+I will _not_ have.”
+
+She relinquished the tiller for a moment. One big mottled arm shot out
+and caught Toad by a fore-leg, while the other-gripped him fast by a
+hind-leg. Then the world turned suddenly upside down, the barge seemed
+to flit lightly across the sky, the wind whistled in his ears, and Toad
+found himself flying through the air, revolving rapidly as he went.
+
+The water, when he eventually reached it with a loud splash, proved
+quite cold enough for his taste, though its chill was not sufficient to
+quell his proud spirit, or slake the heat of his furious temper. He
+rose to the surface spluttering, and when he had wiped the duck-weed
+out of his eyes the first thing he saw was the fat barge-woman looking
+back at him over the stern of the retreating barge and laughing; and he
+vowed, as he coughed and choked, to be even with her.
+
+He struck out for the shore, but the cotton gown greatly impeded his
+efforts, and when at length he touched land he found it hard to climb
+up the steep bank unassisted. He had to take a minute or two’s rest to
+recover his breath; then, gathering his wet skirts well over his arms,
+he started to run after the barge as fast as his legs would carry him,
+wild with indignation, thirsting for revenge.
+
+The barge-woman was still laughing when he drew up level with her. “Put
+yourself through your mangle, washerwoman,” she called out, “and iron
+your face and crimp it, and you’ll pass for quite a decent-looking
+Toad!”
+
+Toad never paused to reply. Solid revenge was what he wanted, not
+cheap, windy, verbal triumphs, though he had a thing or two in his mind
+that he would have liked to say. He saw what he wanted ahead of him.
+Running swiftly on he overtook the horse, unfastened the towrope and
+cast off, jumped lightly on the horse’s back, and urged it to a gallop
+by kicking it vigorously in the sides. He steered for the open country,
+abandoning the tow-path, and swinging his steed down a rutty lane. Once
+he looked back, and saw that the barge had run aground on the other
+side of the canal, and the barge-woman was gesticulating wildly and
+shouting, “Stop, stop, stop!” “I’ve heard that song before,” said Toad,
+laughing, as he continued to spur his steed onward in its wild career.
+
+The barge-horse was not capable of any very sustained effort, and its
+gallop soon subsided into a trot, and its trot into an easy walk; but
+Toad was quite contented with this, knowing that he, at any rate, was
+moving, and the barge was not. He had quite recovered his temper, now
+that he had done something he thought really clever; and he was
+satisfied to jog along quietly in the sun, steering his horse along
+by-ways and bridle-paths, and trying to forget how very long it was
+since he had had a square meal, till the canal had been left very far
+behind him.
+
+He had travelled some miles, his horse and he, and he was feeling
+drowsy in the hot sunshine, when the horse stopped, lowered his head,
+and began to nibble the grass; and Toad, waking up, just saved himself
+from falling off by an effort. He looked about him and found he was on
+a wide common, dotted with patches of gorse and bramble as far as he
+could see. Near him stood a dingy gipsy caravan, and beside it a man
+was sitting on a bucket turned upside down, very busy smoking and
+staring into the wide world. A fire of sticks was burning near by, and
+over the fire hung an iron pot, and out of that pot came forth
+bubblings and gurglings, and a vague suggestive steaminess. Also
+smells—warm, rich, and varied smells—that twined and twisted and
+wreathed themselves at last into one complete, voluptuous, perfect
+smell that seemed like the very soul of Nature taking form and
+appearing to her children, a true Goddess, a mother of solace and
+comfort. Toad now knew well that he had not been really hungry before.
+What he had felt earlier in the day had been a mere trifling qualm.
+This was the real thing at last, and no mistake; and it would have to
+be dealt with speedily, too, or there would be trouble for somebody or
+something. He looked the gipsy over carefully, wondering vaguely
+whether it would be easier to fight him or cajole him. So there he sat,
+and sniffed and sniffed, and looked at the gipsy; and the gipsy sat and
+smoked, and looked at him.
+
+Presently the gipsy took his pipe out of his mouth and remarked in a
+careless way, “Want to sell that there horse of yours?”
+
+Toad was completely taken aback. He did not know that gipsies were very
+fond of horse-dealing, and never missed an opportunity, and he had not
+reflected that caravans were always on the move and took a deal of
+drawing. It had not occurred to him to turn the horse into cash, but
+the gipsy’s suggestion seemed to smooth the way towards the two things
+he wanted so badly—ready money, and a solid breakfast.
+
+“What?” he said, “me sell this beautiful young horse of mine? O, no;
+it’s out of the question. Who’s going to take the washing home to my
+customers every week? Besides, I’m too fond of him, and he simply dotes
+on me.”
+
+“Try and love a donkey,” suggested the gipsy. “Some people do.”
+
+“You don’t seem to see,” continued Toad, “that this fine horse of mine
+is a cut above you altogether. He’s a blood horse, he is, partly; not
+the part you see, of course—another part. And he’s been a Prize
+Hackney, too, in his time—that was the time before you knew him, but
+you can still tell it on him at a glance, if you understand anything
+about horses. No, it’s not to be thought of for a moment. All the same,
+how much might you be disposed to offer me for this beautiful young
+horse of mine?”
+
+The gipsy looked the horse over, and then he looked Toad over with
+equal care, and looked at the horse again. “Shillin’ a leg,” he said
+briefly, and turned away, continuing to smoke and try to stare the wide
+world out of countenance.
+
+“A shilling a leg?” cried Toad. “If you please, I must take a little
+time to work that out, and see just what it comes to.”
+
+He climbed down off his horse, and left it to graze, and sat down by
+the gipsy, and did sums on his fingers, and at last he said, “A
+shilling a leg? Why, that comes to exactly four shillings, and no more.
+O, no; I could not think of accepting four shillings for this beautiful
+young horse of mine.”
+
+“Well,” said the gipsy, “I’ll tell you what I will do. I’ll make it
+five shillings, and that’s three-and-sixpence more than the animal’s
+worth. And that’s my last word.”
+
+Then Toad sat and pondered long and deeply. For he was hungry and quite
+penniless, and still some way—he knew not how far—from home, and
+enemies might still be looking for him. To one in such a situation,
+five shillings may very well appear a large sum of money. On the other
+hand, it did not seem very much to get for a horse. But then, again,
+the horse hadn’t cost him anything; so whatever he got was all clear
+profit. At last he said firmly, “Look here, gipsy! I tell you what we
+will do; and this is _my_ last word. You shall hand me over six
+shillings and sixpence, cash down; and further, in addition thereto,
+you shall give me as much breakfast as I can possibly eat, at one
+sitting of course, out of that iron pot of yours that keeps sending
+forth such delicious and exciting smells. In return, I will make over
+to you my spirited young horse, with all the beautiful harness and
+trappings that are on him, freely thrown in. If that’s not good enough
+for you, say so, and I’ll be getting on. I know a man near here who’s
+wanted this horse of mine for years.”
+
+The gipsy grumbled frightfully, and declared if he did a few more deals
+of that sort he’d be ruined. But in the end he lugged a dirty canvas
+bag out of the depths of his trouser pocket, and counted out six
+shillings and sixpence into Toad’s paw. Then he disappeared into the
+caravan for an instant, and returned with a large iron plate and a
+knife, fork, and spoon. He tilted up the pot, and a glorious stream of
+hot rich stew gurgled into the plate. It was, indeed, the most
+beautiful stew in the world, being made of partridges, and pheasants,
+and chickens, and hares, and rabbits, and pea-hens, and guinea-fowls,
+and one or two other things. Toad took the plate on his lap, almost
+crying, and stuffed, and stuffed, and stuffed, and kept asking for
+more, and the gipsy never grudged it him. He thought that he had never
+eaten so good a breakfast in all his life.
+
+When Toad had taken as much stew on board as he thought he could
+possibly hold, he got up and said good-bye to the gipsy, and took an
+affectionate farewell of the horse; and the gipsy, who knew the
+riverside well, gave him directions which way to go, and he set forth
+on his travels again in the best possible spirits. He was, indeed, a
+very different Toad from the animal of an hour ago. The sun was shining
+brightly, his wet clothes were quite dry again, he had money in his
+pocket once more, he was nearing home and friends and safety, and, most
+and best of all, he had had a substantial meal, hot and nourishing, and
+felt big, and strong, and careless, and self-confident.
+
+As he tramped along gaily, he thought of his adventures and escapes,
+and how when things seemed at their worst he had always managed to find
+a way out; and his pride and conceit began to swell within him. “Ho,
+ho!” he said to himself as he marched along with his chin in the air,
+“what a clever Toad I am! There is surely no animal equal to me for
+cleverness in the whole world! My enemies shut me up in prison,
+encircled by sentries, watched night and day by warders; I walk out
+through them all, by sheer ability coupled with courage. They pursue me
+with engines, and policemen, and revolvers; I snap my fingers at them,
+and vanish, laughing, into space. I am, unfortunately, thrown into a
+canal by a woman fat of body and very evil-minded. What of it? I swim
+ashore, I seize her horse, I ride off in triumph, and I sell the horse
+for a whole pocketful of money and an excellent breakfast! Ho, ho! I am
+The Toad, the handsome, the popular, the successful Toad!” He got so
+puffed up with conceit that he made up a song as he walked in praise of
+himself, and sang it at the top of his voice, though there was no one
+to hear it but him. It was perhaps the most conceited song that any
+animal ever composed.
+
+“The world has held great Heroes,
+    As history-books have showed;
+But never a name to go down to fame
+    Compared with that of Toad!
+
+“The clever men at Oxford
+    Know all that there is to be knowed.
+But they none of them know one half as much
+    As intelligent Mr. Toad!
+
+“The animals sat in the Ark and cried,
+    Their tears in torrents flowed.
+Who was it said, ‘There’s land ahead?’
+    Encouraging Mr. Toad!
+
+“The army all saluted
+    As they marched along the road.
+Was it the King? Or Kitchener?
+    No. It was Mr. Toad.
+
+“The Queen and her Ladies-in-waiting
+    Sat at the window and sewed.
+She cried, ‘Look! who’s that _handsome_ man?’
+    They answered, ‘Mr. Toad.’”
+
+
+There was a great deal more of the same sort, but too dreadfully
+conceited to be written down. These are some of the milder verses.
+
+He sang as he walked, and he walked as he sang, and got more inflated
+every minute. But his pride was shortly to have a severe fall.
+
+After some miles of country lanes he reached the high road, and as he
+turned into it and glanced along its white length, he saw approaching
+him a speck that turned into a dot and then into a blob, and then into
+something very familiar; and a double note of warning, only too well
+known, fell on his delighted ear.
+
+“This is something like!” said the excited Toad. “This is real life
+again, this is once more the great world from which I have been missed
+so long! I will hail them, my brothers of the wheel, and pitch them a
+yarn, of the sort that has been so successful hitherto; and they will
+give me a lift, of course, and then I will talk to them some more; and,
+perhaps, with luck, it may even end in my driving up to Toad Hall in a
+motor-car! That will be one in the eye for Badger!”
+
+He stepped confidently out into the road to hail the motor-car, which
+came along at an easy pace, slowing down as it neared the lane; when
+suddenly he became very pale, his heart turned to water, his knees
+shook and yielded under him, and he doubled up and collapsed with a
+sickening pain in his interior. And well he might, the unhappy animal;
+for the approaching car was the very one he had stolen out of the yard
+of the Red Lion Hotel on that fatal day when all his troubles began!
+And the people in it were the very same people he had sat and watched
+at luncheon in the coffee-room!
+
+He sank down in a shabby, miserable heap in the road, murmuring to
+himself in his despair, “It’s all up! It’s all over now! Chains and
+policemen again! Prison again! Dry bread and water again! O, what a
+fool I have been! What did I want to go strutting about the country
+for, singing conceited songs, and hailing people in broad day on the
+high road, instead of hiding till nightfall and slipping home quietly
+by back ways! O hapless Toad! O ill-fated animal!”
+
+The terrible motor-car drew slowly nearer and nearer, till at last he
+heard it stop just short of him. Two gentlemen got out and walked round
+the trembling heap of crumpled misery lying in the road, and one of
+them said, “O dear! this is very sad! Here is a poor old thing—a
+washerwoman apparently—who has fainted in the road! Perhaps she is
+overcome by the heat, poor creature; or possibly she has not had any
+food to-day. Let us lift her into the car and take her to the nearest
+village, where doubtless she has friends.”
+
+They tenderly lifted Toad into the motor-car and propped him up with
+soft cushions, and proceeded on their way.
+
+When Toad heard them talk in so kind and sympathetic a way, and knew
+that he was not recognised, his courage began to revive, and he
+cautiously opened first one eye and then the other.
+
+“Look!” said one of the gentlemen, “she is better already. The fresh
+air is doing her good. How do you feel now, ma’am?”
+
+“Thank you kindly, Sir,” said Toad in a feeble voice, “I’m feeling a
+great deal better!” “That’s right,” said the gentleman. “Now keep quite
+still, and, above all, don’t try to talk.”
+
+“I won’t,” said Toad. “I was only thinking, if I might sit on the front
+seat there, beside the driver, where I could get the fresh air full in
+my face, I should soon be all right again.”
+
+“What a very sensible woman!” said the gentleman. “Of course you
+shall.” So they carefully helped Toad into the front seat beside the
+driver, and on they went again.
+
+Toad was almost himself again by now. He sat up, looked about him, and
+tried to beat down the tremors, the yearnings, the old cravings that
+rose up and beset him and took possession of him entirely.
+
+“It is fate!” he said to himself. “Why strive? why struggle?” and he
+turned to the driver at his side.
+
+“Please, Sir,” he said, “I wish you would kindly let me try and drive
+the car for a little. I’ve been watching you carefully, and it looks so
+easy and so interesting, and I should like to be able to tell my
+friends that once I had driven a motor-car!”
+
+The driver laughed at the proposal, so heartily that the gentleman
+inquired what the matter was. When he heard, he said, to Toad’s
+delight, “Bravo, ma’am! I like your spirit. Let her have a try, and
+look after her. She won’t do any harm.”
+
+Toad eagerly scrambled into the seat vacated by the driver, took the
+steering-wheel in his hands, listened with affected humility to the
+instructions given him, and set the car in motion, but very slowly and
+carefully at first, for he was determined to be prudent.
+
+The gentlemen behind clapped their hands and applauded, and Toad heard
+them saying, “How well she does it! Fancy a washerwoman driving a car
+as well as that, the first time!”
+
+Toad went a little faster; then faster still, and faster.
+
+He heard the gentlemen call out warningly, “Be careful, washerwoman!”
+And this annoyed him, and he began to lose his head.
+
+The driver tried to interfere, but he pinned him down in his seat with
+one elbow, and put on full speed. The rush of air in his face, the hum
+of the engines, and the light jump of the car beneath him intoxicated
+his weak brain. “Washerwoman, indeed!” he shouted recklessly. “Ho! ho!
+I am the Toad, the motor-car snatcher, the prison-breaker, the Toad who
+always escapes! Sit still, and you shall know what driving really is,
+for you are in the hands of the famous, the skilful, the entirely
+fearless Toad!”
+
+With a cry of horror the whole party rose and flung themselves on him.
+“Seize him!” they cried, “seize the Toad, the wicked animal who stole
+our motor-car! Bind him, chain him, drag him to the nearest
+police-station! Down with the desperate and dangerous Toad!”
+
+Alas! they should have thought, they ought to have been more prudent,
+they should have remembered to stop the motor-car somehow before
+playing any pranks of that sort. With a half-turn of the wheel the Toad
+sent the car crashing through the low hedge that ran along the
+roadside. One mighty bound, a violent shock, and the wheels of the car
+were churning up the thick mud of a horse-pond.
+
+Toad found himself flying through the air with the strong upward rush
+and delicate curve of a swallow. He liked the motion, and was just
+beginning to wonder whether it would go on until he developed wings and
+turned into a Toad-bird, when he landed on his back with a thump, in
+the soft rich grass of a meadow. Sitting up, he could just see the
+motor-car in the pond, nearly submerged; the gentlemen and the driver,
+encumbered by their long coats, were floundering helplessly in the
+water.
+
+He picked himself up rapidly, and set off running across country as
+hard as he could, scrambling through hedges, jumping ditches, pounding
+across fields, till he was breathless and weary, and had to settle down
+into an easy walk. When he had recovered his breath somewhat, and was
+able to think calmly, he began to giggle, and from giggling he took to
+laughing, and he laughed till he had to sit down under a hedge. “Ho,
+ho!” he cried, in ecstasies of self-admiration, “Toad again! Toad, as
+usual, comes out on the top! Who was it got them to give him a lift?
+Who managed to get on the front seat for the sake of fresh air? Who
+persuaded them into letting him see if he could drive? Who landed them
+all in a horse-pond? Who escaped, flying gaily and unscathed through
+the air, leaving the narrow-minded, grudging, timid excursionists in
+the mud where they should rightly be? Why, Toad, of course; clever
+Toad, great Toad, _good_ Toad!”
+
+Then he burst into song again, and chanted with uplifted voice—
+
+“The motor-car went Poop-poop-poop,
+    As it raced along the road.
+Who was it steered it into a pond?
+    Ingenious Mr. Toad!
+
+
+O, how clever I am! How clever, how clever, how very clev——”
+
+A slight noise at a distance behind him made him turn his head and
+look. O horror! O misery! O despair!
+
+About two fields off, a chauffeur in his leather gaiters and two large
+rural policemen were visible, running towards him as hard as they could
+go!
+
+Poor Toad sprang to his feet and pelted away again, his heart in his
+mouth. O, my!” he gasped, as he panted along, “what an _ass_ I am! What
+a _conceited_ and heedless ass! Swaggering again! Shouting and singing
+songs again! Sitting still and gassing again! O my! O my! O my!”
+
+He glanced back, and saw to his dismay that they were gaining on him.
+On he ran desperately, but kept looking back, and saw that they still
+gained steadily. He did his best, but he was a fat animal, and his legs
+were short, and still they gained. He could hear them close behind him
+now. Ceasing to heed where he was going, he struggled on blindly and
+wildly, looking back over his shoulder at the now triumphant enemy,
+when suddenly the earth failed under his feet, he grasped at the air,
+and, splash! he found himself head over ears in deep water, rapid
+water, water that bore him along with a force he could not contend
+with; and he knew that in his blind panic he had run straight into the
+river!
+
+He rose to the surface and tried to grasp the reeds and the rushes that
+grew along the water’s edge close under the bank, but the stream was so
+strong that it tore them out of his hands. “O my!” gasped poor Toad,
+“if ever I steal a motor-car again! If ever I sing another conceited
+song”—then down he went, and came up breathless and spluttering.
+Presently he saw that he was approaching a big dark hole in the bank,
+just above his head, and as the stream bore him past he reached up with
+a paw and caught hold of the edge and held on. Then slowly and with
+difficulty he drew himself up out of the water, till at last he was
+able to rest his elbows on the edge of the hole. There he remained for
+some minutes, puffing and panting, for he was quite exhausted.
+
+As he sighed and blew and stared before him into the dark hole, some
+bright small thing shone and twinkled in its depths, moving towards
+him. As it approached, a face grew up gradually around it, and it was a
+familiar face!
+
+Brown and small, with whiskers.
+
+Grave and round, with neat ears and silky hair.
+
+It was the Water Rat!
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+“LIKE SUMMER TEMPESTS CAME HIS TEARS”
+
+
+The Rat put out a neat little brown paw, gripped Toad firmly by the
+scruff of the neck, and gave a great hoist and a pull; and the
+water-logged Toad came up slowly but surely over the edge of the hole,
+till at last he stood safe and sound in the hall, streaked with mud and
+weed to be sure, and with the water streaming off him, but happy and
+high-spirited as of old, now that he found himself once more in the
+house of a friend, and dodgings and evasions were over, and he could
+lay aside a disguise that was unworthy of his position and wanted such
+a lot of living up to.
+
+“O, Ratty!” he cried. “I’ve been through such times since I saw you
+last, you can’t think! Such trials, such sufferings, and all so nobly
+borne! Then such escapes, such disguises such subterfuges, and all so
+cleverly planned and carried out! Been in prison—got out of it, of
+course! Been thrown into a canal—swam ashore! Stole a horse—sold him
+for a large sum of money! Humbugged everybody—made ’em all do exactly
+what I wanted! Oh, I _am_ a smart Toad, and no mistake! What do you
+think my last exploit was? Just hold on till I tell you——”
+
+“Toad,” said the Water Rat, gravely and firmly, “you go off upstairs at
+once, and take off that old cotton rag that looks as if it might
+formerly have belonged to some washerwoman, and clean yourself
+thoroughly, and put on some of my clothes, and try and come down
+looking like a gentleman if you _can;_ for a more shabby, bedraggled,
+disreputable-looking object than you are I never set eyes on in my
+whole life! Now, stop swaggering and arguing, and be off! I’ll have
+something to say to you later!”
+
+Toad was at first inclined to stop and do some talking back at him. He
+had had enough of being ordered about when he was in prison, and here
+was the thing being begun all over again, apparently; and by a Rat,
+too! However, he caught sight of himself in the looking-glass over the
+hat-stand, with the rusty black bonnet perched rakishly over one eye,
+and he changed his mind and went very quickly and humbly upstairs to
+the Rat’s dressing-room. There he had a thorough wash and brush-up,
+changed his clothes, and stood for a long time before the glass,
+contemplating himself with pride and pleasure, and thinking what utter
+idiots all the people must have been to have ever mistaken him for one
+moment for a washerwoman.
+
+By the time he came down again luncheon was on the table, and very glad
+Toad was to see it, for he had been through some trying experiences and
+had taken much hard exercise since the excellent breakfast provided for
+him by the gipsy. While they ate Toad told the Rat all his adventures,
+dwelling chiefly on his own cleverness, and presence of mind in
+emergencies, and cunning in tight places; and rather making out that he
+had been having a gay and highly-coloured experience. But the more he
+talked and boasted, the more grave and silent the Rat became.
+
+When at last Toad had talked himself to a standstill, there was silence
+for a while; and then the Rat said, “Now, Toady, I don’t want to give
+you pain, after all you’ve been through already; but, seriously, don’t
+you see what an awful ass you’ve been making of yourself? On your own
+admission you have been handcuffed, imprisoned, starved, chased,
+terrified out of your life, insulted, jeered at, and ignominiously
+flung into the water—by a woman, too! Where’s the amusement in that?
+Where does the fun come in? And all because you must needs go and steal
+a motor-car. You know that you’ve never had anything but trouble from
+motor-cars from the moment you first set eyes on one. But if you _will_
+be mixed up with them—as you generally are, five minutes after you’ve
+started—why _steal_ them? Be a cripple, if you think it’s exciting; be
+a bankrupt, for a change, if you’ve set your mind on it: but why choose
+to be a convict? When are you going to be sensible, and think of your
+friends, and try and be a credit to them? Do you suppose it’s any
+pleasure to me, for instance, to hear animals saying, as I go about,
+that I’m the chap that keeps company with gaol-birds?”
+
+Now, it was a very comforting point in Toad’s character that he was a
+thoroughly good-hearted animal and never minded being jawed by those
+who were his real friends. And even when most set upon a thing, he was
+always able to see the other side of the question. So although, while
+the Rat was talking so seriously, he kept saying to himself mutinously,
+“But it _was_ fun, though! Awful fun!” and making strange suppressed
+noises inside him, k-i-ck-ck-ck, and poop-p-p, and other sounds
+resembling stifled snorts, or the opening of soda-water bottles, yet
+when the Rat had quite finished, he heaved a deep sigh and said, very
+nicely and humbly, “Quite right, Ratty! How _sound_ you always are!
+Yes, I’ve been a conceited old ass, I can quite see that; but now I’m
+going to be a good Toad, and not do it any more. As for motor-cars,
+I’ve not been at all so keen about them since my last ducking in that
+river of yours. The fact is, while I was hanging on to the edge of your
+hole and getting my breath, I had a sudden idea—a really brilliant
+idea—connected with motor-boats—there, there! don’t take on so, old
+chap, and stamp, and upset things; it was only an idea, and we won’t
+talk any more about it now. We’ll have our coffee, _and_ a smoke, and a
+quiet chat, and then I’m going to stroll quietly down to Toad Hall, and
+get into clothes of my own, and set things going again on the old
+lines. I’ve had enough of adventures. I shall lead a quiet, steady,
+respectable life, pottering about my property, and improving it, and
+doing a little landscape gardening at times. There will always be a bit
+of dinner for my friends when they come to see me; and I shall keep a
+pony-chaise to jog about the country in, just as I used to in the good
+old days, before I got restless, and wanted to _do_ things.”
+
+“Stroll quietly down to Toad Hall?” cried the Rat, greatly excited.
+“What are you talking about? Do you mean to say you haven’t _heard?_”
+
+“Heard what?” said Toad, turning rather pale. “Go on, Ratty! Quick!
+Don’t spare me! What haven’t I heard?”
+
+“Do you mean to tell me,” shouted the Rat, thumping with his little
+fist upon the table, “that you’ve heard nothing about the Stoats and
+Weasels?”
+
+What, the Wild Wooders?” cried Toad, trembling in every limb. “No, not
+a word! What have they been doing?”
+
+“—And how they’ve been and taken Toad Hall?” continued the Rat.
+
+Toad leaned his elbows on the table, and his chin on his paws; and a
+large tear welled up in each of his eyes, overflowed and splashed on
+the table, plop! plop!
+
+“Go on, Ratty,” he murmured presently; “tell me all. The worst is over.
+I am an animal again. I can bear it.”
+
+“When you—got—into that—that—trouble of yours,” said the Rat, slowly
+and impressively; “I mean, when you—disappeared from society for a
+time, over that misunderstanding about a—a machine, you know—”
+
+Toad merely nodded.
+
+“Well, it was a good deal talked about down here, naturally,” continued
+the Rat, “not only along the river-side, but even in the Wild Wood.
+Animals took sides, as always happens. The River-bankers stuck up for
+you, and said you had been infamously treated, and there was no justice
+to be had in the land nowadays. But the Wild Wood animals said hard
+things, and served you right, and it was time this sort of thing was
+stopped. And they got very cocky, and went about saying you were done
+for this time! You would never come back again, never, never!”
+
+Toad nodded once more, keeping silence.
+
+“That’s the sort of little beasts they are,” the Rat went on. “But Mole
+and Badger, they stuck out, through thick and thin, that you would come
+back again soon, somehow. They didn’t know exactly how, but somehow!”
+
+Toad began to sit up in his chair again, and to smirk a little.
+
+“They argued from history,” continued the Rat. “They said that no
+criminal laws had ever been known to prevail against cheek and
+plausibility such as yours, combined with the power of a long purse. So
+they arranged to move their things in to Toad Hall, and sleep there,
+and keep it aired, and have it all ready for you when you turned up.
+They didn’t guess what was going to happen, of course; still, they had
+their suspicions of the Wild Wood animals. Now I come to the most
+painful and tragic part of my story. One dark night—it was a _very_
+dark night, and blowing hard, too, and raining simply cats and dogs—a
+band of weasels, armed to the teeth, crept silently up the
+carriage-drive to the front entrance. Simultaneously, a body of
+desperate ferrets, advancing through the kitchen-garden, possessed
+themselves of the backyard and offices; while a company of skirmishing
+stoats who stuck at nothing occupied the conservatory and the
+billiard-room, and held the French windows opening on to the lawn.
+
+“The Mole and the Badger were sitting by the fire in the smoking-room,
+telling stories and suspecting nothing, for it wasn’t a night for any
+animals to be out in, when those bloodthirsty villains broke down the
+doors and rushed in upon them from every side. They made the best fight
+they could, but what was the good? They were unarmed, and taken by
+surprise, and what can two animals do against hundreds? They took and
+beat them severely with sticks, those two poor faithful creatures, and
+turned them out into the cold and the wet, with many insulting and
+uncalled-for remarks!”
+
+Here the unfeeling Toad broke into a snigger, and then pulled himself
+together and tried to look particularly solemn.
+
+“And the Wild Wooders have been living in Toad Hall ever since,”
+continued the Rat; “and going on simply anyhow! Lying in bed half the
+day, and breakfast at all hours, and the place in such a mess (I’m
+told) it’s not fit to be seen! Eating your grub, and drinking your
+drink, and making bad jokes about you, and singing vulgar songs,
+about—well, about prisons and magistrates, and policemen; horrid
+personal songs, with no humour in them. And they’re telling the
+tradespeople and everybody that they’ve come to stay for good.”
+
+“O, have they!” said Toad getting up and seizing a stick. “I’ll jolly
+soon see about that!”
+
+“It’s no good, Toad!” called the Rat after him. “You’d better come back
+and sit down; you’ll only get into trouble.”
+
+But the Toad was off, and there was no holding him. He marched rapidly
+down the road, his stick over his shoulder, fuming and muttering to
+himself in his anger, till he got near his front gate, when suddenly
+there popped up from behind the palings a long yellow ferret with a
+gun.
+
+“Who comes there?” said the ferret sharply.
+
+“Stuff and nonsense!” said Toad, very angrily. “What do you mean by
+talking like that to me? Come out of that at once, or I’ll——”
+
+The ferret said never a word, but he brought his gun up to his
+shoulder. Toad prudently dropped flat in the road, and _Bang!_ a bullet
+whistled over his head.
+
+The startled Toad scrambled to his feet and scampered off down the road
+as hard as he could; and as he ran he heard the ferret laughing and
+other horrid thin little laughs taking it up and carrying on the sound.
+
+He went back, very crestfallen, and told the Water Rat.
+
+“What did I tell you?” said the Rat. “It’s no good. They’ve got
+sentries posted, and they are all armed. You must just wait.”
+
+Still, Toad was not inclined to give in all at once. So he got out the
+boat, and set off rowing up the river to where the garden front of Toad
+Hall came down to the waterside.
+
+Arriving within sight of his old home, he rested on his oars and
+surveyed the land cautiously. All seemed very peaceful and deserted and
+quiet. He could see the whole front of Toad Hall, glowing in the
+evening sunshine, the pigeons settling by twos and threes along the
+straight line of the roof; the garden, a blaze of flowers; the creek
+that led up to the boat-house, the little wooden bridge that crossed
+it; all tranquil, uninhabited, apparently waiting for his return. He
+would try the boat-house first, he thought. Very warily he paddled up
+to the mouth of the creek, and was just passing under the bridge, when
+... _Crash!_
+
+A great stone, dropped from above, smashed through the bottom of the
+boat. It filled and sank, and Toad found himself struggling in deep
+water. Looking up, he saw two stoats leaning over the parapet of the
+bridge and watching him with great glee. “It will be your head next
+time, Toady!” they called out to him. The indignant Toad swam to shore,
+while the stoats laughed and laughed, supporting each other, and
+laughed again, till they nearly had two fits—that is, one fit each, of
+course.
+
+The Toad retraced his weary way on foot, and related his disappointing
+experiences to the Water Rat once more.
+
+“Well, _what_ did I tell you?” said the Rat very crossly. “And, now,
+look here! See what you’ve been and done! Lost me my boat that I was so
+fond of, that’s what you’ve done! And simply ruined that nice suit of
+clothes that I lent you! Really, Toad, of all the trying animals—I
+wonder you manage to keep any friends at all!”
+
+The Toad saw at once how wrongly and foolishly he had acted. He
+admitted his errors and wrong-headedness and made a full apology to Rat
+for losing his boat and spoiling his clothes. And he wound up by
+saying, with that frank self-surrender which always disarmed his
+friend’s criticism and won them back to his side, “Ratty! I see that I
+have been a headstrong and a wilful Toad! Henceforth, believe me, I
+will be humble and submissive, and will take no action without your
+kind advice and full approval!”
+
+“If that is really so,” said the good-natured Rat, already appeased,
+“then my advice to you is, considering the lateness of the hour, to sit
+down and have your supper, which will be on the table in a minute, and
+be very patient. For I am convinced that we can do nothing until we
+have seen the Mole and the Badger, and heard their latest news, and
+held conference and taken their advice in this difficult matter.”
+
+“Oh, ah, yes, of course, the Mole and the Badger,” said Toad, lightly.
+“What’s become of them, the dear fellows? I had forgotten all about
+them.”
+
+“Well may you ask!” said the Rat reproachfully. “While you were riding
+about the country in expensive motor-cars, and galloping proudly on
+blood-horses, and breakfasting on the fat of the land, those two poor
+devoted animals have been camping out in the open, in every sort of
+weather, living very rough by day and lying very hard by night;
+watching over your house, patrolling your boundaries, keeping a
+constant eye on the stoats and the weasels, scheming and planning and
+contriving how to get your property back for you. You don’t deserve to
+have such true and loyal friends, Toad, you don’t, really. Some day,
+when it’s too late, you’ll be sorry you didn’t value them more while
+you had them!”
+
+“I’m an ungrateful beast, I know,” sobbed Toad, shedding bitter tears.
+“Let me go out and find them, out into the cold, dark night, and share
+their hardships, and try and prove by——Hold on a bit! Surely I heard
+the chink of dishes on a tray! Supper’s here at last, hooray! Come on,
+Ratty!”
+
+The Rat remembered that poor Toad had been on prison fare for a
+considerable time, and that large allowances had therefore to be made.
+He followed him to the table accordingly, and hospitably encouraged him
+in his gallant efforts to make up for past privations.
+
+They had just finished their meal and resumed their arm-chairs, when
+there came a heavy knock at the door.
+
+Toad was nervous, but the Rat, nodding mysteriously at him, went
+straight up to the door and opened it, and in walked Mr. Badger.
+
+He had all the appearance of one who for some nights had been kept away
+from home and all its little comforts and conveniences. His shoes were
+covered with mud, and he was looking very rough and touzled; but then
+he had never been a very smart man, the Badger, at the best of times.
+He came solemnly up to Toad, shook him by the paw, and said, “Welcome
+home, Toad! Alas! what am I saying? Home, indeed! This is a poor
+home-coming. Unhappy Toad!” Then he turned his back on him, sat down to
+the table, drew his chair up, and helped himself to a large slice of
+cold pie.
+
+Toad was quite alarmed at this very serious and portentous style of
+greeting; but the Rat whispered to him, “Never mind; don’t take any
+notice; and don’t say anything to him just yet. He’s always rather low
+and despondent when he’s wanting his victuals. In half an hour’s time
+he’ll be quite a different animal.”
+
+So they waited in silence, and presently there came another and a
+lighter knock. The Rat, with a nod to Toad, went to the door and
+ushered in the Mole, very shabby and unwashed, with bits of hay and
+straw sticking in his fur.
+
+“Hooray! Here’s old Toad!” cried the Mole, his face beaming. “Fancy
+having you back again!” And he began to dance round him. “We never
+dreamt you would turn up so soon! Why, you must have managed to escape,
+you clever, ingenious, intelligent Toad!”
+
+The Rat, alarmed, pulled him by the elbow; but it was too late. Toad
+was puffing and swelling already.
+
+“Clever? O, no!” he said. “I’m not really clever, according to my
+friends. I’ve only broken out of the strongest prison in England,
+that’s all! And captured a railway train and escaped on it, that’s all!
+And disguised myself and gone about the country humbugging everybody,
+that’s all! O, no! I’m a stupid ass, I am! I’ll tell you one or two of
+my little adventures, Mole, and you shall judge for yourself!”
+
+“Well, well,” said the Mole, moving towards the supper-table;
+“supposing you talk while I eat. Not a bite since breakfast! O my! O
+my!” And he sat down and helped himself liberally to cold beef and
+pickles.
+
+Toad straddled on the hearth-rug, thrust his paw into his
+trouser-pocket and pulled out a handful of silver. “Look at that!” he
+cried, displaying it. “That’s not so bad, is it, for a few minutes’
+work? And how do you think I done it, Mole? Horse-dealing! That’s how I
+done it!”
+
+“Go on, Toad,” said the Mole, immensely interested.
+
+“Toad, do be quiet, please!” said the Rat. “And don’t you egg him on,
+Mole, when you know what he is; but please tell us as soon as possible
+what the position is, and what’s best to be done, now that Toad is back
+at last.”
+
+“The position’s about as bad as it can be,” replied the Mole grumpily;
+“and as for what’s to be done, why, blest if I know! The Badger and I
+have been round and round the place, by night and by day; always the
+same thing. Sentries posted everywhere, guns poked out at us, stones
+thrown at us; always an animal on the look-out, and when they see us,
+my! how they do laugh! That’s what annoys me most!”
+
+“It’s a very difficult situation,” said the Rat, reflecting deeply.
+“But I think I see now, in the depths of my mind, what Toad really
+ought to do. I will tell you. He ought to——”
+
+“No, he oughtn’t!” shouted the Mole, with his mouth full. “Nothing of
+the sort! You don’t understand. What he ought to do is, he ought to——”
+
+“Well, I shan’t do it, anyway!” cried Toad, getting excited. “I’m not
+going to be ordered about by you fellows! It’s my house we’re talking
+about, and I know exactly what to do, and I’ll tell you. I’m going
+to——”
+
+By this time they were all three talking at once, at the top of their
+voices, and the noise was simply deafening, when a thin, dry voice made
+itself heard, saying, “Be quiet at once, all of you!” and instantly
+every one was silent.
+
+It was the Badger, who, having finished his pie, had turned round in
+his chair and was looking at them severely. When he saw that he had
+secured their attention, and that they were evidently waiting for him
+to address them, he turned back to the table again and reached out for
+the cheese. And so great was the respect commanded by the solid
+qualities of that admirable animal, that not another word was uttered
+until he had quite finished his repast and brushed the crumbs from his
+knees. The Toad fidgeted a good deal, but the Rat held him firmly down.
+
+When the Badger had quite done, he got up from his seat and stood
+before the fireplace, reflecting deeply. At last he spoke.
+
+“Toad!” he said severely. “You bad, troublesome little animal! Aren’t
+you ashamed of yourself? What do you think your father, my old friend,
+would have said if he had been here to-night, and had known of all your
+goings on?”
+
+Toad, who was on the sofa by this time, with his legs up, rolled over
+on his face, shaken by sobs of contrition.
+
+“There, there!” went on the Badger, more kindly. “Never mind. Stop
+crying. We’re going to let bygones be bygones, and try and turn over a
+new leaf. But what the Mole says is quite true. The stoats are on
+guard, at every point, and they make the best sentinels in the world.
+It’s quite useless to think of attacking the place. They’re too strong
+for us.”
+
+“Then it’s all over,” sobbed the Toad, crying into the sofa cushions.
+“I shall go and enlist for a soldier, and never see my dear Toad Hall
+any more!”
+
+“Come, cheer up, Toady!” said the Badger. “There are more ways of
+getting back a place than taking it by storm. I haven’t said my last
+word yet. Now I’m going to tell you a great secret.”
+
+Toad sat up slowly and dried his eyes. Secrets had an immense
+attraction for him, because he never could keep one, and he enjoyed the
+sort of unhallowed thrill he experienced when he went and told another
+animal, after having faithfully promised not to.
+
+“There—is—an—underground—passage,” said the Badger, impressively, “that
+leads from the river-bank, quite near here, right up into the middle of
+Toad Hall.”
+
+“O, nonsense! Badger,” said Toad, rather airily. “You’ve been listening
+to some of the yarns they spin in the public-houses about here. I know
+every inch of Toad Hall, inside and out. Nothing of the sort, I do
+assure you!”
+
+“My young friend,” said the Badger, with great severity, “your father,
+who was a worthy animal—a lot worthier than some others I know—was a
+particular friend of mine, and told me a great deal he wouldn’t have
+dreamt of telling you. He discovered that passage—he didn’t make it, of
+course; that was done hundreds of years before he ever came to live
+there—and he repaired it and cleaned it out, because he thought it
+might come in useful some day, in case of trouble or danger; and he
+showed it to me. ‘Don’t let my son know about it,’ he said. ‘He’s a
+good boy, but very light and volatile in character, and simply cannot
+hold his tongue. If he’s ever in a real fix, and it would be of use to
+him, you may tell him about the secret passage; but not before.’”
+
+The other animals looked hard at Toad to see how he would take it. Toad
+was inclined to be sulky at first; but he brightened up immediately,
+like the good fellow he was.
+
+“Well, well,” he said; “perhaps I am a bit of a talker. A popular
+fellow such as I am—my friends get round me—we chaff, we sparkle, we
+tell witty stories—and somehow my tongue gets wagging. I have the gift
+of conversation. I’ve been told I ought to have a _salon_, whatever
+that may be. Never mind. Go on, Badger. How’s this passage of yours
+going to help us?”
+
+“I’ve found out a thing or two lately,” continued the Badger. “I got
+Otter to disguise himself as a sweep and call at the back-door with
+brushes over his shoulder, asking for a job. There’s going to be a big
+banquet to-morrow night. It’s somebody’s birthday—the Chief Weasel’s, I
+believe—and all the weasels will be gathered together in the
+dining-hall, eating and drinking and laughing and carrying on,
+suspecting nothing. No guns, no swords, no sticks, no arms of any sort
+whatever!”
+
+“But the sentinels will be posted as usual,” remarked the Rat.
+
+“Exactly,” said the Badger; “that is my point. The weasels will trust
+entirely to their excellent sentinels. And that is where the passage
+comes in. That very useful tunnel leads right up under the butler’s
+pantry, next to the dining-hall!”
+
+“Aha! that squeaky board in the butler’s pantry!” said Toad. “Now I
+understand it!”
+
+“We shall creep out quietly into the butler’s pantry—” cried the Mole.
+
+“—with our pistols and swords and sticks—” shouted the Rat.
+
+“—and rush in upon them,” said the Badger.
+
+“—and whack ’em, and whack ’em, and whack ’em!” cried the Toad in
+ecstasy, running round and round the room, and jumping over the chairs.
+
+“Very well, then,” said the Badger, resuming his usual dry manner, “our
+plan is settled, and there’s nothing more for you to argue and squabble
+about. So, as it’s getting very late, all of you go right off to bed at
+once. We will make all the necessary arrangements in the course of the
+morning to-morrow.”
+
+Toad, of course, went off to bed dutifully with the rest—he knew better
+than to refuse—though he was feeling much too excited to sleep. But he
+had had a long day, with many events crowded into it; and sheets and
+blankets were very friendly and comforting things, after plain straw,
+and not too much of it, spread on the stone floor of a draughty cell;
+and his head had not been many seconds on his pillow before he was
+snoring happily. Naturally, he dreamt a good deal; about roads that ran
+away from him just when he wanted them, and canals that chased him and
+caught him, and a barge that sailed into the banqueting-hall with his
+week’s washing, just as he was giving a dinner-party; and he was alone
+in the secret passage, pushing onwards, but it twisted and turned round
+and shook itself, and sat up on its end; yet somehow, at the last, he
+found himself back in Toad Hall, safe and triumphant, with all his
+friends gathered round about him, earnestly assuring him that he really
+was a clever Toad.
+
+He slept till a late hour next morning, and by the time he got down he
+found that the other animals had finished their breakfast some time
+before. The Mole had slipped off somewhere by himself, without telling
+any one where he was going to. The Badger sat in the arm-chair, reading
+the paper, and not concerning himself in the slightest about what was
+going to happen that very evening. The Rat, on the other hand, was
+running round the room busily, with his arms full of weapons of every
+kind, distributing them in four little heaps on the floor, and saying
+excitedly under his breath, as he ran, “Here’s-a-sword-for-the-Rat,
+here’s-a-sword-for-the Mole, here’s-a-sword-for-the-Toad,
+here’s-a-sword-for-the-Badger! Here’s-a-pistol-for-the-Rat,
+here’s-a-pistol-for-the-Mole, here’s-a-pistol-for-the-Toad,
+here’s-a-pistol-for-the-Badger!” And so on, in a regular, rhythmical
+way, while the four little heaps gradually grew and grew.
+
+“That’s all very well, Rat,” said the Badger presently, looking at the
+busy little animal over the edge of his newspaper; “I’m not blaming
+you. But just let us once get past the stoats, with those detestable
+guns of theirs, and I assure you we shan’t want any swords or pistols.
+We four, with our sticks, once we’re inside the dining-hall, why, we
+shall clear the floor of all the lot of them in five minutes. I’d have
+done the whole thing by myself, only I didn’t want to deprive you
+fellows of the fun!”
+
+“It’s as well to be on the safe side,” said the Rat reflectively,
+polishing a pistol-barrel on his sleeve and looking along it.
+
+The Toad, having finished his breakfast, picked up a stout stick and
+swung it vigorously, belabouring imaginary animals. “I’ll learn ’em to
+steal my house!” he cried. “I’ll learn ’em, I’ll learn ’em!”
+
+“Don’t say ‘learn ’em,’ Toad,” said the Rat, greatly shocked. “It’s not
+good English.”
+
+“What are you always nagging at Toad for?” inquired the Badger, rather
+peevishly. “What’s the matter with his English? It’s the same what I
+use myself, and if it’s good enough for me, it ought to be good enough
+for you!”
+
+“I’m very sorry,” said the Rat humbly. “Only I _think_ it ought to be
+‘teach ’em,’ not ‘learn ’em.’”
+
+“But we don’t _want_ to teach ’em,” replied the Badger. “We want to
+_learn_ ’em—learn ’em, learn ’em! And what’s more, we’re going to _do_
+it, too!”
+
+“Oh, very well, have it your own way,” said the Rat. He was getting
+rather muddled about it himself, and presently he retired into a
+corner, where he could be heard muttering, “Learn ’em, teach ’em, teach
+’em, learn ’em!” till the Badger told him rather sharply to leave off.
+
+Presently the Mole came tumbling into the room, evidently very pleased
+with himself. “I’ve been having such fun!” he began at once; “I’ve been
+getting a rise out of the stoats!”
+
+“I hope you’ve been very careful, Mole?” said the Rat anxiously.
+
+“I should hope so, too,” said the Mole confidently. “I got the idea
+when I went into the kitchen, to see about Toad’s breakfast being kept
+hot for him. I found that old washerwoman-dress that he came home in
+yesterday, hanging on a towel-horse before the fire. So I put it on,
+and the bonnet as well, and the shawl, and off I went to Toad Hall, as
+bold as you please. The sentries were on the look-out, of course, with
+their guns and their ‘Who comes there?’ and all the rest of their
+nonsense. ‘Good morning, gentlemen!’ says I, very respectful. ‘Want any
+washing done to-day?’
+
+“They looked at me very proud and stiff and haughty, and said, ‘Go
+away, washerwoman! We don’t do any washing on duty.’ ‘Or any other
+time?’ says I. Ho, ho, ho! Wasn’t I _funny_, Toad?”
+
+“Poor, frivolous animal!” said Toad, very loftily. The fact is, he felt
+exceedingly jealous of Mole for what he had just done. It was exactly
+what he would have liked to have done himself, if only he had thought
+of it first, and hadn’t gone and overslept himself.
+
+“Some of the stoats turned quite pink,” continued the Mole, “and the
+Sergeant in charge, he said to me, very short, he said, ‘Now run away,
+my good woman, run away! Don’t keep my men idling and talking on their
+posts.’ ‘Run away?’ says I; ‘it won’t be me that’ll be running away, in
+a very short time from now!’”
+
+“O _Moly_, how could you?” said the Rat, dismayed.
+
+The Badger laid down his paper.
+
+“I could see them pricking up their ears and looking at each other,”
+went on the Mole; “and the Sergeant said to them, ‘Never mind _her;_
+she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.’”
+
+“‘O! don’t I?’” said I. “‘Well, let me tell you this. My daughter, she
+washes for Mr. Badger, and that’ll show you whether I know what I’m
+talking about; and _you’ll_ know pretty soon, too! A hundred
+bloodthirsty badgers, armed with rifles, are going to attack Toad Hall
+this very night, by way of the paddock. Six boatloads of Rats, with
+pistols and cutlasses, will come up the river and effect a landing in
+the garden; while a picked body of Toads, known at the Die-hards, or
+the Death-or-Glory Toads, will storm the orchard and carry everything
+before them, yelling for vengeance. There won’t be much left of you to
+wash, by the time they’ve done with you, unless you clear out while you
+have the chance!’ Then I ran away, and when I was out of sight I hid;
+and presently I came creeping back along the ditch and took a peep at
+them through the hedge. They were all as nervous and flustered as could
+be, running all ways at once, and falling over each other, and every
+one giving orders to everybody else and not listening; and the Sergeant
+kept sending off parties of stoats to distant parts of the grounds, and
+then sending other fellows to fetch ’em back again; and I heard them
+saying to each other, ‘That’s just like the weasels; they’re to stop
+comfortably in the banqueting-hall, and have feasting and toasts and
+songs and all sorts of fun, while we must stay on guard in the cold and
+the dark, and in the end be cut to pieces by bloodthirsty Badgers!”’
+
+“Oh, you silly ass, Mole!” cried Toad, “You’ve been and spoilt
+everything!”
+
+“Mole,” said the Badger, in his dry, quiet way, “I perceive you have
+more sense in your little finger than some other animals have in the
+whole of their fat bodies. You have managed excellently, and I begin to
+have great hopes of you. Good Mole! Clever Mole!”
+
+The Toad was simply wild with jealousy, more especially as he couldn’t
+make out for the life of him what the Mole had done that was so
+particularly clever; but, fortunately for him, before he could show
+temper or expose himself to the Badger’s sarcasm, the bell rang for
+luncheon.
+
+It was a simple but sustaining meal—bacon and broad beans, and a
+macaroni pudding; and when they had quite done, the Badger settled
+himself into an arm-chair, and said, “Well, we’ve got our work cut out
+for us to-night, and it will probably be pretty late before we’re quite
+through with it; so I’m just going to take forty winks, while I can.”
+And he drew a handkerchief over his face and was soon snoring.
+
+The anxious and laborious Rat at once resumed his preparations, and
+started running between his four little heaps, muttering,
+“Here’s-a-belt-for-the-Rat, here’s-a-belt-for-the-Mole,
+here’s-a-belt-for-the-Toad, here’s-a-belt-for-the-Badger!” and so on,
+with every fresh accoutrement he produced, to which there seemed really
+no end; so the Mole drew his arm through Toad’s, led him out into the
+open air, shoved him into a wicker chair, and made him tell him all his
+adventures from beginning to end, which Toad was only too willing to
+do. The Mole was a good listener, and Toad, with no one to check his
+statements or to criticise in an unfriendly spirit, rather let himself
+go. Indeed, much that he related belonged more properly to the category
+of what-might-have-happened-had-I-only-thought-of-it-in-time-instead-of
+ten-minutes-afterwards. Those are always the best and the raciest
+adventures; and why should they not be truly ours, as much as the
+somewhat inadequate things that really come off?
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+THE RETURN OF ULYSSES
+
+
+When it began to grow dark, the Rat, with an air of excitement and
+mystery, summoned them back into the parlour, stood each of them up
+alongside of his little heap, and proceeded to dress them up for the
+coming expedition. He was very earnest and thoroughgoing about it, and
+the affair took quite a long time. First, there was a belt to go round
+each animal, and then a sword to be stuck into each belt, and then a
+cutlass on the other side to balance it. Then a pair of pistols, a
+policeman’s truncheon, several sets of handcuffs, some bandages and
+sticking-plaster, and a flask and a sandwich-case. The Badger laughed
+good-humouredly and said, “All right, Ratty! It amuses you and it
+doesn’t hurt me. I’m going to do all I’ve got to do with this here
+stick.” But the Rat only said, “_please_, Badger. You know I shouldn’t
+like you to blame me afterwards and say I had forgotten _anything!_”
+
+When all was quite ready, the Badger took a dark lantern in one paw,
+grasped his great stick with the other, and said, “Now then, follow me!
+Mole first, “cos I’m very pleased with him; Rat next; Toad last. And
+look here, Toady! Don’t you chatter so much as usual, or you’ll be sent
+back, as sure as fate!”
+
+The Toad was so anxious not to be left out that he took up the inferior
+position assigned to him without a murmur, and the animals set off. The
+Badger led them along by the river for a little way, and then suddenly
+swung himself over the edge into a hole in the river-bank, a little
+above the water. The Mole and the Rat followed silently, swinging
+themselves successfully into the hole as they had seen the Badger do;
+but when it came to Toad’s turn, of course he managed to slip and fall
+into the water with a loud splash and a squeal of alarm. He was hauled
+out by his friends, rubbed down and wrung out hastily, comforted, and
+set on his legs; but the Badger was seriously angry, and told him that
+the very next time he made a fool of himself he would most certainly be
+left behind.
+
+So at last they were in the secret passage, and the cutting-out
+expedition had really begun!
+
+It was cold, and dark, and damp, and low, and narrow, and poor Toad
+began to shiver, partly from dread of what might be before him, partly
+because he was wet through. The lantern was far ahead, and he could not
+help lagging behind a little in the darkness. Then he heard the Rat
+call out warningly, “_Come_ on, Toad!” and a terror seized him of being
+left behind, alone in the darkness, and he “came on” with such a rush
+that he upset the Rat into the Mole and the Mole into the Badger, and
+for a moment all was confusion. The Badger thought they were being
+attacked from behind, and, as there was no room to use a stick or a
+cutlass, drew a pistol, and was on the point of putting a bullet into
+Toad. When he found out what had really happened he was very angry
+indeed, and said, “Now this time that tiresome Toad _shall_ be left
+behind!”
+
+But Toad whimpered, and the other two promised that they would be
+answerable for his good conduct, and at last the Badger was pacified,
+and the procession moved on; only this time the Rat brought up the
+rear, with a firm grip on the shoulder of Toad.
+
+So they groped and shuffled along, with their ears pricked up and their
+paws on their pistols, till at last the Badger said, “We ought by now
+to be pretty nearly under the Hall.”
+
+Then suddenly they heard, far away as it might be, and yet apparently
+nearly over their heads, a confused murmur of sound, as if people were
+shouting and cheering and stamping on the floor and hammering on
+tables. The Toad’s nervous terrors all returned, but the Badger only
+remarked placidly, “They _are_ going it, the Weasels!”
+
+The passage now began to slope upwards; they groped onward a little
+further, and then the noise broke out again, quite distinct this time,
+and very close above them. “Ooo-ray-ooray-oo-ray-ooray!” they heard,
+and the stamping of little feet on the floor, and the clinking of
+glasses as little fists pounded on the table. “_What_ a time they’re
+having!” said the Badger. “Come on!” They hurried along the passage
+till it came to a full stop, and they found themselves standing under
+the trap-door that led up into the butler’s pantry.
+
+Such a tremendous noise was going on in the banqueting-hall that there
+was little danger of their being overheard. The Badger said, “Now,
+boys, all together!” and the four of them put their shoulders to the
+trap-door and heaved it back. Hoisting each other up, they found
+themselves standing in the pantry, with only a door between them and
+the banqueting-hall, where their unconscious enemies were carousing.
+
+The noise, as they emerged from the passage, was simply deafening. At
+last, as the cheering and hammering slowly subsided, a voice could be
+made out saying, “Well, I do not propose to detain you much
+longer”—(great applause)—“but before I resume my seat”—(renewed
+cheering)—“I should like to say one word about our kind host, Mr. Toad.
+We all know Toad!”—(great laughter)—“_Good_ Toad, _modest_ Toad,
+_honest_ Toad!” (shrieks of merriment).
+
+“Only just let me get at him!” muttered Toad, grinding his teeth.
+
+“Hold hard a minute!” said the Badger, restraining him with difficulty.
+“Get ready, all of you!”
+
+“—Let me sing you a little song,” went on the voice, “which I have
+composed on the subject of Toad”—(prolonged applause).
+
+Then the Chief Weasel—for it was he—began in a high, squeaky voice—
+
+“Toad he went a-pleasuring
+Gaily down the street—”
+
+
+The Badger drew himself up, took a firm grip of his stick with both
+paws, glanced round at his comrades, and cried—
+
+“The hour is come! Follow me!”
+
+And flung the door open wide.
+
+My!
+
+What a squealing and a squeaking and a screeching filled the air!
+
+Well might the terrified weasels dive under the tables and spring madly
+up at the windows! Well might the ferrets rush wildly for the fireplace
+and get hopelessly jammed in the chimney! Well might tables and chairs
+be upset, and glass and china be sent crashing on the floor, in the
+panic of that terrible moment when the four Heroes strode wrathfully
+into the room! The mighty Badger, his whiskers bristling, his great
+cudgel whistling through the air; Mole, black and grim, brandishing his
+stick and shouting his awful war-cry, “A Mole! A Mole!” Rat; desperate
+and determined, his belt bulging with weapons of every age and every
+variety; Toad, frenzied with excitement and injured pride, swollen to
+twice his ordinary size, leaping into the air and emitting Toad-whoops
+that chilled them to the marrow! “Toad he went a-pleasuring!” he
+yelled. “_I’ll_ pleasure ’em!” and he went straight for the Chief
+Weasel. They were but four in all, but to the panic-stricken weasels
+the hall seemed full of monstrous animals, grey, black, brown and
+yellow, whooping and flourishing enormous cudgels; and they broke and
+fled with squeals of terror and dismay, this way and that, through the
+windows, up the chimney, anywhere to get out of reach of those terrible
+sticks.
+
+The affair was soon over. Up and down, the whole length of the hall,
+strode the four Friends, whacking with their sticks at every head that
+showed itself; and in five minutes the room was cleared. Through the
+broken windows the shrieks of terrified weasels escaping across the
+lawn were borne faintly to their ears; on the floor lay prostrate some
+dozen or so of the enemy, on whom the Mole was busily engaged in
+fitting handcuffs. The Badger, resting from his labours, leant on his
+stick and wiped his honest brow.
+
+“Mole,” he said,” “you’re the best of fellows! Just cut along outside
+and look after those stoat-sentries of yours, and see what they’re
+doing. I’ve an idea that, thanks to you, we shan’t have much trouble
+from _them_ to-night!”
+
+The Mole vanished promptly through a window; and the Badger bade the
+other two set a table on its legs again, pick up knives and forks and
+plates and glasses from the _débris_ on the floor, and see if they
+could find materials for a supper. “I want some grub, I do,” he said,
+in that rather common way he had of speaking. “Stir your stumps, Toad,
+and look lively! We’ve got your house back for you, and you don’t offer
+us so much as a sandwich.” Toad felt rather hurt that the Badger didn’t
+say pleasant things to him, as he had to the Mole, and tell him what a
+fine fellow he was, and how splendidly he had fought; for he was rather
+particularly pleased with himself and the way he had gone for the Chief
+Weasel and sent him flying across the table with one blow of his stick.
+But he bustled about, and so did the Rat, and soon they found some
+guava jelly in a glass dish, and a cold chicken, a tongue that had
+hardly been touched, some trifle, and quite a lot of lobster salad; and
+in the pantry they came upon a basketful of French rolls and any
+quantity of cheese, butter, and celery. They were just about to sit
+down when the Mole clambered in through the window, chuckling, with an
+armful of rifles.
+
+“It’s all over,” he reported. “From what I can make out, as soon as the
+stoats, who were very nervous and jumpy already, heard the shrieks and
+the yells and the uproar inside the hall, some of them threw down their
+rifles and fled. The others stood fast for a bit, but when the weasels
+came rushing out upon them they thought they were betrayed; and the
+stoats grappled with the weasels, and the weasels fought to get away,
+and they wrestled and wriggled and punched each other, and rolled over
+and over, till most of ’em rolled into the river! They’ve all
+disappeared by now, one way or another; and I’ve got their rifles. So
+_that’s_ all right!”
+
+“Excellent and deserving animal!” said the Badger, his mouth full of
+chicken and trifle. “Now, there’s just one more thing I want you to do,
+Mole, before you sit down to your supper along of us; and I wouldn’t
+trouble you only I know I can trust you to see a thing done, and I wish
+I could say the same of every one I know. I’d send Rat, if he wasn’t a
+poet. I want you to take those fellows on the floor there upstairs with
+you, and have some bedrooms cleaned out and tidied up and made really
+comfortable. See that they sweep _under_ the beds, and put clean sheets
+and pillow-cases on, and turn down one corner of the bed-clothes, just
+as you know it ought to be done; and have a can of hot water, and clean
+towels, and fresh cakes of soap, put in each room. And then you can
+give them a licking a-piece, if it’s any satisfaction to you, and put
+them out by the back-door, and we shan’t see any more of _them_, I
+fancy. And then come along and have some of this cold tongue. It’s
+first rate. I’m very pleased with you, Mole!”
+
+The goodnatured Mole picked up a stick, formed his prisoners up in a
+line on the floor, gave them the order “Quick march!” and led his squad
+off to the upper floor. After a time, he appeared again, smiling, and
+said that every room was ready, and as clean as a new pin. “And I
+didn’t have to lick them, either,” he added. “I thought, on the whole,
+they had had licking enough for one night, and the weasels, when I put
+the point to them, quite agreed with me, and said they wouldn’t think
+of troubling me. They were very penitent, and said they were extremely
+sorry for what they had done, but it was all the fault of the Chief
+Weasel and the stoats, and if ever they could do anything for us at any
+time to make up, we had only got to mention it. So I gave them a roll
+a-piece, and let them out at the back, and off they ran, as hard as
+they could!”
+
+Then the Mole pulled his chair up to the table, and pitched into the
+cold tongue; and Toad, like the gentleman he was, put all his jealousy
+from him, and said heartily, “Thank you kindly, dear Mole, for all your
+pains and trouble tonight, and especially for your cleverness this
+morning!” The Badger was pleased at that, and said, “There spoke my
+brave Toad!” So they finished their supper in great joy and
+contentment, and presently retired to rest between clean sheets, safe
+in Toad’s ancestral home, won back by matchless valour, consummate
+strategy, and a proper handling of sticks.
+
+The following morning, Toad, who had overslept himself as usual, came
+down to breakfast disgracefully late, and found on the table a certain
+quantity of egg-shells, some fragments of cold and leathery toast, a
+coffee-pot three-fourths empty, and really very little else; which did
+not tend to improve his temper, considering that, after all, it was his
+own house. Through the French windows of the breakfast-room he could
+see the Mole and the Water Rat sitting in wicker-chairs out on the
+lawn, evidently telling each other stories; roaring with laughter and
+kicking their short legs up in the air. The Badger, who was in an
+arm-chair and deep in the morning paper, merely looked up and nodded
+when Toad entered the room. But Toad knew his man, so he sat down and
+made the best breakfast he could, merely observing to himself that he
+would get square with the others sooner or later. When he had nearly
+finished, the Badger looked up and remarked rather shortly: “I’m sorry,
+Toad, but I’m afraid there’s a heavy morning’s work in front of you.
+You see, we really ought to have a Banquet at once, to celebrate this
+affair. It’s expected of you—in fact, it’s the rule.”
+
+“O, all right!” said the Toad, readily. “Anything to oblige. Though why
+on earth you should want to have a Banquet in the morning I cannot
+understand. But you know I do not live to please myself, but merely to
+find out what my friends want, and then try and arrange it for ’em, you
+dear old Badger!”
+
+“Don’t pretend to be stupider than you really are,” replied the Badger,
+crossly; “and don’t chuckle and splutter in your coffee while you’re
+talking; it’s not manners. What I mean is, the Banquet will be at
+night, of course, but the invitations will have to be written and got
+off at once, and you’ve got to write ’em. Now, sit down at that
+table—there’s stacks of letter-paper on it, with ‘Toad Hall’ at the top
+in blue and gold—and write invitations to all our friends, and if you
+stick to it we shall get them out before luncheon. And _I’ll_ bear a
+hand, too; and take my share of the burden. _I’ll_ order the Banquet.”
+
+“What!” cried Toad, dismayed. “Me stop indoors and write a lot of
+rotten letters on a jolly morning like this, when I want to go around
+my property, and set everything and everybody to rights, and swagger
+about and enjoy myself! Certainly not! I’ll be—I’ll see you——Stop a
+minute, though! Why, of course, dear Badger! What is my pleasure or
+convenience compared with that of others! You wish it done, and it
+shall be done. Go, Badger, order the Banquet, order what you like; then
+join our young friends outside in their innocent mirth, oblivious of me
+and my cares and toils. I sacrifice this fair morning on the altar of
+duty and friendship!”
+
+The Badger looked at him very suspiciously, but Toad’s frank, open
+countenance made it difficult to suggest any unworthy motive in this
+change of attitude. He quitted the room, accordingly, in the direction
+of the kitchen, and as soon as the door had closed behind him, Toad
+hurried to the writing-table. A fine idea had occurred to him while he
+was talking. He _would_ write the invitations; and he would take care
+to mention the leading part he had taken in the fight, and how he had
+laid the Chief Weasel flat; and he would hint at his adventures, and
+what a career of triumph he had to tell about; and on the fly-leaf he
+would set out a sort of a programme of entertainment for the
+evening—something like this, as he sketched it out in his head:—
+
+SPEECH. . . . BY TOAD.
+(There will be other speeches by TOAD during the evening.)
+
+
+ADDRESS. . . BY TOAD
+SYNOPSIS—Our Prison System—the Waterways of Old England—Horse-dealing,
+and how to deal—Property, its rights and its duties—Back to the Land—A
+Typical English Squire.
+
+
+SONG. . . . BY TOAD.
+(Composed by himself.)
+
+
+OTHER COMPOSITIONS. BY TOAD
+will be sung in the course of the evening by the. . . COMPOSER.
+
+
+The idea pleased him mightily, and he worked very hard and got all the
+letters finished by noon, at which hour it was reported to him that
+there was a small and rather bedraggled weasel at the door, inquiring
+timidly whether he could be of any service to the gentlemen. Toad
+swaggered out and found it was one of the prisoners of the previous
+evening, very respectful and anxious to please. He patted him on the
+head, shoved the bundle of invitations into his paw, and told him to
+cut along quick and deliver them as fast as he could, and if he liked
+to come back again in the evening, perhaps there might be a shilling
+for him, or, again, perhaps there mightn’t; and the poor weasel seemed
+really quite grateful, and hurried off eagerly to do his mission.
+
+When the other animals came back to luncheon, very boisterous and
+breezy after a morning on the river, the Mole, whose conscience had
+been pricking him, looked doubtfully at Toad, expecting to find him
+sulky or depressed. Instead, he was so uppish and inflated that the
+Mole began to suspect something; while the Rat and the Badger exchanged
+significant glances.
+
+As soon as the meal was over, Toad thrust his paws deep into his
+trouser-pockets, remarked casually, “Well, look after yourselves, you
+fellows! Ask for anything you want!” and was swaggering off in the
+direction of the garden, where he wanted to think out an idea or two
+for his coming speeches, when the Rat caught him by the arm.
+
+Toad rather suspected what he was after, and did his best to get away;
+but when the Badger took him firmly by the other arm he began to see
+that the game was up. The two animals conducted him between them into
+the small smoking-room that opened out of the entrance-hall, shut the
+door, and put him into a chair. Then they both stood in front of him,
+while Toad sat silent and regarded them with much suspicion and
+ill-humour.
+
+“Now, look here, Toad,” said the Rat. “It’s about this Banquet, and
+very sorry I am to have to speak to you like this. But we want you to
+understand clearly, once and for all, that there are going to be no
+speeches and no songs. Try and grasp the fact that on this occasion
+we’re not arguing with you; we’re just telling you.”
+
+Toad saw that he was trapped. They understood him, they saw through
+him, they had got ahead of him. His pleasant dream was shattered.
+
+“Mayn’t I sing them just one _little_ song?” he pleaded piteously.
+
+“No, not _one_ little song,” replied the Rat firmly, though his heart
+bled as he noticed the trembling lip of the poor disappointed Toad.
+“It’s no good, Toady; you know well that your songs are all conceit and
+boasting and vanity; and your speeches are all self-praise
+and—and—well, and gross exaggeration and—and——”
+
+“And gas,” put in the Badger, in his common way.
+
+“It’s for your own good, Toady,” went on the Rat. “You know you _must_
+turn over a new leaf sooner or later, and now seems a splendid time to
+begin; a sort of turning-point in your career. Please don’t think that
+saying all this doesn’t hurt me more than it hurts you.”
+
+Toad remained a long while plunged in thought. At last he raised his
+head, and the traces of strong emotion were visible on his features.
+“You have conquered, my friends,” he said in broken accents. “It was,
+to be sure, but a small thing that I asked—merely leave to blossom and
+expand for yet one more evening, to let myself go and hear the
+tumultuous applause that always seems to me—somehow—to bring out my
+best qualities. However, you are right, I know, and I am wrong. Hence
+forth I will be a very different Toad. My friends, you shall never have
+occasion to blush for me again. But, O dear, O dear, this is a hard
+world!”
+
+And, pressing his handkerchief to his face, he left the room, with
+faltering footsteps.
+
+“Badger,” said the Rat, “_I_ feel like a brute; I wonder what _you_
+feel like?”
+
+“O, I know, I know,” said the Badger gloomily. “But the thing had to be
+done. This good fellow has got to live here, and hold his own, and be
+respected. Would you have him a common laughing-stock, mocked and
+jeered at by stoats and weasels?”
+
+“Of course not,” said the Rat. “And, talking of weasels, it’s lucky we
+came upon that little weasel, just as he was setting out with Toad’s
+invitations. I suspected something from what you told me, and had a
+look at one or two; they were simply disgraceful. I confiscated the
+lot, and the good Mole is now sitting in the blue boudoir, filling up
+plain, simple invitation cards.”
+
+
+At last the hour for the banquet began to draw near, and Toad, who on
+leaving the others had retired to his bedroom, was still sitting there,
+melancholy and thoughtful. His brow resting on his paw, he pondered
+long and deeply. Gradually his countenance cleared, and he began to
+smile long, slow smiles. Then he took to giggling in a shy,
+self-conscious manner. At last he got up, locked the door, drew the
+curtains across the windows, collected all the chairs in the room and
+arranged them in a semicircle, and took up his position in front of
+them, swelling visibly. Then he bowed, coughed twice, and, letting
+himself go, with uplifted voice he sang, to the enraptured audience
+that his imagination so clearly saw.
+
+TOAD’S LAST LITTLE SONG!
+
+The Toad—came—home!
+There was panic in the parlours and howling in the halls,
+There was crying in the cow-sheds and shrieking in the stalls,
+When the Toad—came—home!
+
+When the Toad—came—home!
+There was smashing in of window and crashing in of door,
+There was chivvying of weasels that fainted on the floor,
+When the Toad—came—home!
+
+Bang! go the drums!
+The trumpeters are tooting and the soldiers are saluting,
+And the cannon they are shooting and the motor-cars are hooting,
+As the—Hero—comes!
+
+Shout—Hoo-ray!
+And let each one of the crowd try and shout it very loud,
+In honour of an animal of whom you’re justly proud,
+For it’s Toad’s—great—day!
+
+
+He sang this very loud, with great unction and expression; and when he
+had done, he sang it all over again.
+
+Then he heaved a deep sigh; a long, long, long sigh.
+
+Then he dipped his hairbrush in the water-jug, parted his hair in the
+middle, and plastered it down very straight and sleek on each side of
+his face; and, unlocking the door, went quietly down the stairs to
+greet his guests, who he knew must be assembling in the drawing-room.
+
+All the animals cheered when he entered, and crowded round to
+congratulate him and say nice things about his courage, and his
+cleverness, and his fighting qualities; but Toad only smiled faintly,
+and murmured, “Not at all!” Or, sometimes, for a change, “On the
+contrary!” Otter, who was standing on the hearthrug, describing to an
+admiring circle of friends exactly how he would have managed things had
+he been there, came forward with a shout, threw his arm round Toad’s
+neck, and tried to take him round the room in triumphal progress; but
+Toad, in a mild way, was rather snubby to him, remarking gently, as he
+disengaged himself, “Badger’s was the mastermind; the Mole and the
+Water Rat bore the brunt of the fighting; I merely served in the ranks
+and did little or nothing.” The animals were evidently puzzled and
+taken aback by this unexpected attitude of his; and Toad felt, as he
+moved from one guest to the other, making his modest responses, that he
+was an object of absorbing interest to every one.
+
+The Badger had ordered everything of the best, and the banquet was a
+great success. There was much talking and laughter and chaff among the
+animals, but through it all Toad, who of course was in the chair,
+looked down his nose and murmured pleasant nothings to the animals on
+either side of him. At intervals he stole a glance at the Badger and
+the Rat, and always when he looked they were staring at each other with
+their mouths open; and this gave him the greatest satisfaction. Some of
+the younger and livelier animals, as the evening wore on, got
+whispering to each other that things were not so amusing as they used
+to be in the good old days; and there were some knockings on the table
+and cries of “Toad! Speech! Speech from Toad! Song! Mr. Toad’s song!”
+But Toad only shook his head gently, raised one paw in mild protest,
+and, by pressing delicacies on his guests, by topical small-talk, and
+by earnest inquiries after members of their families not yet old enough
+to appear at social functions, managed to convey to them that this
+dinner was being run on strictly conventional lines.
+
+He was indeed an altered Toad!
+
+
+After this climax, the four animals continued to lead their lives, so
+rudely broken in upon by civil war, in great joy and contentment,
+undisturbed by further risings or invasions. Toad, after due
+consultation with his friends, selected a handsome gold chain and
+locket set with pearls, which he dispatched to the gaoler’s daughter
+with a letter that even the Badger admitted to be modest, grateful, and
+appreciative; and the engine-driver, in his turn, was properly thanked
+and compensated for all his pains and trouble. Under severe compulsion
+from the Badger, even the barge-woman was, with some trouble, sought
+out and the value of her horse discreetly made good to her; though Toad
+kicked terribly at this, holding himself to be an instrument of Fate,
+sent to punish fat women with mottled arms who couldn’t tell a real
+gentleman when they saw one. The amount involved, it was true, was not
+very burdensome, the gipsy’s valuation being admitted by local
+assessors to be approximately correct.
+
+Sometimes, in the course of long summer evenings, the friends would
+take a stroll together in the Wild Wood, now successfully tamed so far
+as they were concerned; and it was pleasing to see how respectfully
+they were greeted by the inhabitants, and how the mother-weasels would
+bring their young ones to the mouths of their holes, and say, pointing,
+“Look, baby! There goes the great Mr. Toad! And that’s the gallant
+Water Rat, a terrible fighter, walking along o’ him! And yonder comes
+the famous Mr. Mole, of whom you so often have heard your father tell!”
+But when their infants were fractious and quite beyond control, they
+would quiet them by telling how, if they didn’t hush them and not fret
+them, the terrible grey Badger would up and get them. This was a base
+libel on Badger, who, though he cared little about Society, was rather
+fond of children; but it never failed to have its full effect.
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 289 ***