'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.
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