d the Mole, pulling himself together with an
effort. "You must think me very rude; but all this is so new to me.
So--this--is--a--River!"

"_The_ River," corrected the Rat.

"And you really live by the river? What a jolly life!"

"By it and with it and on it and in it," said the Rat. "It's brother
and sister to me, and aunts, and company, and food and drink, and
(naturally) washing. It's my world, and I don't want any other. What
it hasn't got is not worth having, and what it doesn't know is not
worth knowing. Lord! the times we've had together! Whether in winter
or summer, spring or autumn, it's always got its fun and its
excitements. When the floods are on in February, and my cellars and
basement are brimming with drink that's no good to me, and the brown
water runs by my best bedroom window; or again when it all drops away
and shows patches of mud that smells like plum-cake, and the rushes
and weed clog the channels, and I can potter about dry shod over most
of the bed of it and find fresh food to eat, and things careless
people have dropped out of boats!"

"But isn't it a bit dull at times?" the Mole ventured to ask. "Just
you and the river, and no one else to pass a word with?"

"No one else to--well, I mustn't be hard on you," said the Rat with
forbearance. "You're new to it, and of course you don't know. The bank
is so crowded nowadays that many people are moving away altogether. O
no, it isn't what it used to be, at all. Otters, king-fishers,
dabchicks, moorhens, all of them about all day long and always wanting
you to _do_ something--as if a fellow had no business of his own to
attend to!"

"What lies over _there_?" asked the Mole, waving a paw towards a
background of woodland that darkly framed the water-meadows on one
side of the river.

"That? O, that's just the Wild Wood," said the Rat shortly. "We don't
go there very much, we river-bankers."

"Aren't they--aren't they very _nice_ people in there?" said the Mole
a trifle nervously.

"W-e-ll," replied the Rat, "let me see. The squirrels are all right.
_And_ the rabbits--some of 'em, 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