Dear
old Badger! Nobody interferes with HIM. They'd better not,' he added
significantly.
'Why, who SHOULD interfere with him?' asked the Mole.
'Well, of course--there--are others,' explained the Rat in a
hesitating sort of way.
'Weasels--and stoats--and foxes--and so on. They're all right in a
way--I'm very good friends with them--pass the time of day when we
meet, and all that--but they break out sometimes, there's no denying
it, and then--well, you can't really trust them, and that's the fact.'
The Mole knew well that it is quite against animal-etiquette to dwell
on possible trouble ahead, or even to allude to it; so he dropped the
subject.
'And beyond the Wild Wood again?' he asked: 'Where it's all blue and
dim, and one sees what may be hills or perhaps they mayn't, and
something like the smoke of towns, or is it only cloud-drift?'
'Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World,' said the Rat. 'And
that's something that doesn't matter, either to you or me. I've never
been there, and I'm never going, nor you either, if you've got any
sense at all.
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