The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (most popular ebook readers txt) 📗

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 motorcar! That will be one in the eye for Badger!”

He stepped confidently out into the road to hail the motorcar, 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 motorcar 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 today. 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 motorcar 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 motorcar!”

The driver laughed at the proposal, so heartily that the gentleman inquired