"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.