ning him. He certainly lay very still and flat, and his voice
was weaker and his manner much changed.

'Surely you have noticed of late----' murmured Toad. 'But, no--why
should you? Noticing things is only a trouble. To-morrow, indeed, you
may be saying to yourself, "O, if only I had noticed sooner! If only I
had done something!" But no; it's a trouble. Never mind--forget that I
asked.'

'Look here, old man,' said the Rat, beginning to get rather alarmed, 'of
course I'll fetch a doctor to you, if you really think you want him. But
you can hardly be bad enough for that yet. Let's talk about something
else.'

'I fear, dear friend,' said Toad, with a sad smile, 'that "talk" can do
little in a case like this--or doctors either, for that matter; still,
one must grasp at the slightest straw. And, by the way--while you
are about it--I HATE to give you additional trouble, but I happen to
remember that you will pass the door--would you mind at the same time
asking the lawyer to step up? It would be a convenience to me, and there
are moments--perhaps I should say there is A moment--when one must face
disagreeable tasks, at whatever cost to exhausted nature!'

'A lawyer! O, he must be really bad!' the affrighted Rat said to
himself, as he hurried from the room, not forgetting, however, to lock
the door carefully behind him.

Outside, he stopped to consider. The other two were far away, and he had
no one to consult.

'It's best to be on the safe side,' he said, on reflection. 'I've known
Toad fancy himself frightfully bad before, without the slightest reason;
but I've never heard him ask for a lawyer! If there's nothing really the
matter, the doctor will tell him he's an old ass, and cheer him up; and
that will be something gained. I'd better humour him and go; it won't
take very long.' So he ran off to the village on his errand of mercy.

The Toad, who had hopped lightly out of bed as soon as he heard the
key turned in the lock, watched him eagerly from the window till he
disappeared down the carriage-drive. Then, laughing heartily, he dressed
as quickly as possible in the smartest suit he could lay hands on at the
moment, filled his pockets with cash which he took from a small drawer
in the dressing-table, and next, knotting the sheets from his bed
together and tying one end of the improvised rope round the central
mullion of the handsome Tudor window which formed such a feature of his
bedroom, he scrambled out, slid ligh