y well for you to say so, but
you must excuse me for saying, my dear Sir Bevis, that you really know
very little about it. The thrush and the starling would not understand
what you meant. The thrush's father always did as Kapchack told him, and
sang his praises, as I told you, and so did his grandfather, and his
great-grandfather, and all his friends and relations, these years and
years past. So that now the thrushes have no idea of there being no
Kapchack. They could not understand you, if you tried to explain to them
how nice it would be without him. If you sat in your swing and talked to
them all day long, for all the summer through, they would only think you
very stupid even to suppose such a state of things as no Kapchack. Quite
impossible, Bevis dear!--excuse me correcting you. Why, instead of
liking it, they would say it would be very dreadful to have no
Kapchack."

"Well, they are silly!" said Bevis. "But _you_ do not like Kapchack!"

"No, I do not," said the toad; "and if you will stoop down
again----(Bevis stooped still nearer.) No; perhaps you had better lie
down on the grass! There--now I can talk to you quite freely. The fact
is, do you know, there are other people besides me who do not like
Kapchack. The crow--I can't have anything to do with such an old
rogue!--the crow, I am certain, hates Kapchack, but he dares not say so.
Now I am so old, and they think me so stupid and deaf that people say a
good deal before me, never imagining that I take any notice. And when I
have been out of a dewy evening, I have distinctly heard the crow
grumbling about Kapchack. The crow thinks he is quite as clever as
Kapchack, and would make quite as good a king.

"Nor is the rat satisfied, nor the weasel, nor the hawk. I am sure they
are not, but they cannot do anything alone, and they are so suspicious
of each other they cannot agree. So that, though they are dissatisfied,
they can do nothing. I daresay Kapchack knows it very well indeed. He is
so wise--so very, very wise--that he can see right into what they think,
and he knows that they hate him, and he laughs in his sleeve. I will
tell you what he does. He sets the hawk on against the rat, and the rat
on against the crow, and the crow against the weasel. He tells them all
sorts of things; so that the weasel thinks the crow tells tales about
him, and the hawk thinks the rat has turned tail and betrayed his
confidence. The result is, they hate one another as much as they