ould I have such a precious
thing? And if it makes others angry, it can't give me any pleasure.
No, I only wish I could get to the edge of the well, and look out;
it must be beautiful up there."

"You'd better stay where you are," said the old Mother-Toad,
"for you know everything here, and you can tell what you have. Take
care of the bucket, for it will crush you to death; and even if you
get into it safely, you may fall out. And it's not every one who falls
so cleverly as I did, and gets away with whole legs and whole bones.

"Quack!" said the little Toad; and that's just as if one of us
were to say, "Aha!"

She had an immense desire to get to the edge of the well, and to
look over; she felt such a longing for the green, up there; and the
next morning, when it chanced that the bucket was being drawn up,
filled with water, and stopped for a moment just in front of the stone
on which the Toad sat, the little creature's heart moved within it,
and our Toad jumped into the filled bucket, which presently was
drawn to the top, and emptied out.

"Ugh, you beast!" said the farm laborer who emptied the bucket,
when he saw the toad. "You're the ugliest thing I've seen for one
while." And he made a kick with his wooden shoe at the toad, which
just escaped being crushed by managing to scramble into the nettles
which grew high by the well's brink. Here she saw stem by stem, but
she looked up also; the sun shone through the leaves, which were quite
transparent; and she felt as a person would feel who steps suddenly
into a great forest, where the sun looks in between the branches and
leaves.

"It's much nicer here than down in the well! I should like to stay
here my whole life long!" said the little Toad. So she lay there for
an hour, yes, for two hours. "I wonder what is to be found up here? As
I have come so far, I must try to go still farther." And so she
crawled on as fast as she could crawl, and got out upon the highway,
where the sun shone upon her, and the dust powdered her all over as
she marched across the way.

"I've got to a dry place now, and no mistake," said the Toad.
"It's almost too much of a good thing here; it tickles one so."

She came to the ditch; and forget-me-nots were growing there,
and meadow-sweet; and a very little way off was a hedge of whitethorn,
and elder bushes grew there, too, and bindweed with white flowers. Gay
colors were to be seen here, and a butterfly, too, was flitting by.
The Toad th