ining 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