better not try. But, after all, you've some good points about you. If
it were not that you would become vain I would tell you that you've got
a very good pair of bright eyes, and a pretty mottled skin, and that
you're at least the size of a big chicken--not a plucked but a
full-fledged chicken. But, O frog, you've got a horribly ugly big
mouth, and you're too fat--a great deal too fat for elegance; though I
have no doubt it's comfortable. Most fat people are comfortable. Oh!
you would, would you?"

This last exclamation was caused by the frog making a lazy leap to one
side, tumbling heavily over on its back, and rolling clumsily on to its
legs again, as if it wished to escape from its tormentor, but had
scarcely vigour enough to make the effort. Peterkin quietly lifted it
up and placed it deliberately before him again in the same attitude as
before.

"Don't try that again, old boy," said he, shaking his finger
threateningly and frowning severely, "else I'll be obliged to give you a
poke in the nose. I wonder, now, Frog, if you ever had a mother, or if
you only grew out of the earth like a plant. Tell me, were you ever
dandled in a mother's arms? Do you know anything of maternal affection,
eh? Humph! I suspect not. You would not look so besottedly stupid if
you did. I tell you what it is, old fellow: you're uncommonly bad
company, and I've a good mind to ram my knife through you, and carry you
into camp to my friend Ralph Rover, who'll skin and stuff you to such an
extent that your own mother wouldn't know you, and carry you to England,
and place you in a museum under a glass case, to be gazed at by nurses,
and stared at by children, and philosophised about by learned
professors. Hollo! none o' that now. Come, poor beast; I didn't mean
to frighten you. There, sit still, and don't oblige me to stick you up
again, and I'll not take you to Ralph."

The poor frog, which had made another attempt to escape, gazed vacantly
at Peterkin again without moving, except in regard to the puffing before
referred to.

"Now, frog, I'll have to bid you good afternoon. I'm sorry that time
and circumstance necessitate our separation, but I'm glad that I have
had the pleasure of meeting with you. Glad and sorry, frog, in the same
breath! Did you ever philosophise on that point, eh? Is it possible,
think you, to be glad and sorry at one and the same moment? No doubt a
creature like you, with such a very small intellect