The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror(36)

Eventually Mole wandered into the clearing and took an interest. “Hello, Toad,” he called down into the hole. “What are you doing down there?”

“I heard a noise,” came a voice from very deep within the hole. “And I thought there might be something making the noise.”

“I don’t think you’ll find anything down there but more noise,” Mole said. “Why don’t you climb back up to where I am?”

“I can do it,” Toad said.

“No, you can’t,” Mole said in a sorrowful voice. “Your hands are tired. Your wrists are aching. Your head hurts. There’s dirt in your mouth and the stones are cutting your feet. And the farther down you go, the worse it gets.”

“I can do it,” Toad said.

“I have to tell you something about the humming noise, Toad,” Mole said. “It knows your name and doesn’t like it. It knows who you are, and it doesn’t like that either.”

Toad kept climbing down.

“It knows that you’re trying to get to it,” Mole said, “and it likes that least of all. It’s a gray sort of buzzing, isn’t it, heavy and dull, and it makes your head spin, doesn’t it?”

Toad said nothing, because his head was spinning. Mole was always right about that sort of thing.

“Why don’t you come back up, where all your friends are here to see you?” Mole said.

“I haven’t got any friends up there,” Toad said.

“How can you say that,” Rat asked, stepping out from behind Mole and peering down past the edge of the hole, “when you know we’re the best friends you have in the whole world?”

“It’s very sad that he would say that to us,” Mole said to Rat.

“Very sad indeed,” Rat said. “I’m going to cry unless Toad climbs out of that hole right now.”

Finally Toad came back out. His head hurt, and his wrists were aching, and the stones cut his feet, and it didn’t get any better when he reached the ground. And he was still hungry. He was so hungry that he fell over, and he tasted the dirt in his mouth.

“What a mess you look,” Rat said.

“I’m hungry,” said Toad. “I’m sorry. It’s because I’m hungry.”

“How can you be hungry,” Mole said, “when you’ve just eaten every bite of the picnic lunch that Rat and I brought to share between ourselves?”

“I haven’t had any picnic,” Toad said, and tried to lift his arm to wipe his mouth. “I haven’t had anything at all.”

“It was very rude of you,” Rat said, “to take all the picnic lunch for yourself and not to offer even a little tiny bite to your friends.”

“I’m sorry,” Toad said to the dirt.

“We don’t want you to be sorry,” Mole said. “We just wish you would think of someone else once in a while. Toad, there’s a picnic basket in that motorcar sitting at the bottom of that hole just below us. Why don’t you climb down and bring it up?”

“All right,” Toad said after a minute, and slowly lowered himself back down into the hole.

After Toad had begun to climb down, Rat shouted down after him, “Now, Toady, I don’t want to give you pain—not after all you’ve been through already—but don’t you see what a terrible ass you’ve been making of yourself? Handcuffed, imprisoned, starved, beaten, chased, jeered at, insulted, and terrified half out of your wits—where’s the fun in that?”

“And all because you must go around stealing motorcars,” Mole said. “You know you’ve never had anything but trouble from motorcars from the moment you first set eyes on one.”

“If you must be mixed up with them,” Rat said, “why steal them? Be a madman, if you think it’s exciting; be bankrupt for a change, if you really set your mind to it; but why choose to be a convict? When are you going to be sensible and think of your friends, and try to be a credit to them? Do you suppose it’s any pleasure for me, for instance, to hear people saying, as I go about, that I’m the chap that keeps company with gaolbirds?”

There was no answer from the hole at their feet except for the humming sound. Rat picked up a rock in his hand and weighed it thoughtfully. He shook his head.

“He brings it on himself,” Mole said tragically.

Mr. Toad Gets a New House

It was a very commendable point of Toad’s character that he never minded being jawed by any of his friends, who really did have his best interests at heart, and always forgave them after each episode. After the business with the humming sound in the hole (“And what a time we had taking care of you after that,” Rat had said), Toad spent a few days lying very quietly on the floor with a cold washcloth over his eyes at Mole’s house.

After about a week had passed, Toad began to speak of going home. “You’ve been quite right, Mole—I’ve been terribly conceited, I can see that now—but I’m going to be quite a good Toad from now on, and not go bothering with motorcars or holes in the ground or anything of the sort. I’m not so keen at all on motorcars now.” He spoke very rapidly and without sitting up. “The fact is, I had the idea that I might take a nice quiet trip on a riverboat and— There, there! Don’t take on so, Mole, 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 then I’ll go on home to Toad Hall, and back into my own clothes, and set things going again along the old lines. I’ve had quite enough of adventures, I can assure you. I shall lead a quiet, steady, respectable life, one that would make any of you proud to own me to anyone who asked. I shall potter about the property, making little improvements—nothing out of sorts, of course—doing a little gardening, and always having a bit of dinner ready for my friends when they come to see me, just as I used to in the good old days, before I got restless and wanted to do things.”