Chapter 7
When the Toad found himself in a dark and noisome dungeon, he flung himself at full length on the floor, and shed bitter tears, and abandoned himself to dark despair.
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 afterdinner 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!’
Soon the girl made friends with the Toad and told him that she had an aunt who was a washerwoman. She offered to let the Toad out of the dungeon.
‘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!’
The 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, the 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.
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.
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.
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.’
As the speed of the train 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.
The miserable Toad, crouching in the coal-dust, tried hard to think of something to do, with dismal want of success.
Then the 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!
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.’
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!’
The Toad jumped, rolled down a short embankment, picked himself up unhurt, scrambled into the wood and hid.
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.
❒
