Return to the Willows by Jacqueline Kelly

Author:Jacqueline Kelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Toad on the Road

In which Toad, who must find his way home on limited brainpower, has a brush with the law.

Toad dreamt he was back at Toad Hall. He dreamt he was sleeping in his own featherbed, nestled in a snug pocket of fine linen sheets. He dreamt that there weren’t scratchy bits of hay working their way up his sleeves and down his neck, that he wasn’t itching all over in the most dreadful way, that the urgent need to sneeze wasn’t tickling his nose. But as with every other dream, this one had to end. He woke up sneezing and found himself in a haystack. There were indeed bits of hay working their way down his shirt, and he was in fact itching, horribly, all over. “Oh, drat,” he groaned, yawning and scratching. “Oh, bother.”

He hauled his squat figure down from the stack and tried to shake out his clothes.54 The night before, climbing into the hay had seemed like such a good idea. Now he knew it for what it was: a terribly bad idea. He scratched himself furiously and looked about in the half-light. The farmer’s house in the distance was showing signs of life, and wasn’t that a dog he heard, barking to be let out? A huge, slavering beast, no doubt, who breakfasted on toads.

He hurried away across the field.

* * *

Noon found the weary Toad trudging along a dusty footpath, the midday sun bearing down upon him like an anvil. Heretofore he had always looked upon the sun as his friend, a delightful companion during the all-too-brief summer months. But now it bludgeoned him with sadistic tropical fury and mocked his tortuous progress homeward. He’d never in his life been so thirsty and hot. What wouldn’t he give just now for a small rain cloud, if only one could be ordered up? Why, half his fortune, willingly. He’d never in his life been so hungry and tired. What wouldn’t he give for a simple mug of tea and a humble fried egg sandwich? The rest of his fortune, gladly. He came at last to a road and a signpost. To the left lay Retchford and East Retchford; to the right, Wopping Crudworth. Not one of these towns was familiar to him.

“Oh, this is all too much,” he cried. He shook his fists at the sun and yelled unprintable curses at it, ordering it to go away. But the sun completely ignored him.55

“Why me? Why me?” he yelled.56 He threw himself to the ground and pounded the hot dust with his fists and kicked his legs and rolled about most disgracefully, all the while weeping petulant tears. None of which did him the slightest bit of good. After a few minutes, he realized he was making a spectacle of himself, and he sat up, covered in powdery dust from head to toe, looking somewhat spectral.

“Think, Toady,” he murmured to himself. “Think, think, think.”

It would have been nothing for Professor Toad to analyze the

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