m, but rabbits are a mixed lot. And then there's
Badger, of course. He lives right in the heart of it; wouldn't live
anywhere else, either, if you paid him to do it. 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. Don't ever refer to it again, please. Now then! Here's our
backwater at last, where we're going to lunch.'

Leaving the main stream, they now passed into what seemed at first sight
like a little land-locked lake. Green turf sloped down to either edge,
brown snaky tree-roots gleamed below the surface of the quiet water,
while ahead of them the silvery shoulder and foamy tumble of a weir,
arm-in-arm with a restless dripping mill-wheel, that held up in its
turn a grey-gabled mill-house, filled the air with a soothing murmur
of sound, dull and smothery, yet with little clear voices speaking up
cheerfully out of it at intervals. It was so very beautiful that the
Mole could only hold up both forepaws and gasp, 'O my! O my! O my!'

The Rat brought the boat alongside the bank, made her fast, helped the
still awkward Mole safely ashore, and swung out the luncheon-basket. The
Mole begged as a favour to be allowed to unpack it all by himself; and
the Rat was very pleased to indulge him, and to sprawl at full length on
the grass and rest, while his excited friend shook out the table-cloth
and spread it, took out all the mysterious packets one by one and
arranged their contents in due order, still gasping, 'O my! O