esides, it's dull work, and I
want you to be happy. No, you shall do the washing you are so fond of,
and I'll stick to the steering that I understand. Don't try and
deprive me of the pleasure of giving you a treat!"

Toad was fairly cornered. He looked for escape this way and that, saw
that he was too far from the bank for a flying leap, and sullenly
resigned himself to his fate. "If it comes to that," he thought in
desperation, "I suppose any fool can _wash_!"

He fetched tub, soap, and other necessaries from the cabin, selected a
few garments at random, tried to recollect what he had seen in casual
glances through laundry windows, and set to.

A long half-hour passed, and every minute of it saw Toad getting
crosser and crosser. Nothing that he could do to the things seemed to
please them or do them good. He tried coaxing, he tried slapping, he
tried punching; they smiled back at him out of the tub unconverted,
happy in their original sin. Once or twice he looked nervously over
his shoulder at the barge-woman, but she appeared to be gazing out in
front of her, absorbed in her steering. His back ached badly, and he
noticed with dismay that his paws were beginning to get all crinkly.
Now Toad was very proud of his paws. He muttered under his breath
words that should never pass the lips of either washerwomen or Toads;
and lost the soap, for the fiftieth time.

A burst of laughter made him straighten himself and look round. The
barge-woman was leaning back and laughing unrestrainedly, till the
tears ran down her cheeks.

"I've been watching you all the time," she gasped. "I thought you must
be a humbug all along, from the conceited way you talked. Pretty
washerwoman you are! Never washed so much as a dish-clout in your
life, I'll lay!"

Toad's temper, which had been simmering viciously for some time, now
fairly boiled over, and he lost all control of himself.

"You common, low, _fat_ barge-woman!" he shouted; "don't you dare to
talk to your betters like that! Washerwoman indeed! I would have you
to know that I am a Toad, a very well-known, respected, distinguished
Toad! I may be under a bit of a cloud at present, but I will _not_ be
laughed at by a barge-woman!"

The woman moved nearer to him and peered under his bonnet keenly and
closely. "Why, so you are!" she cried. "Well, I never! A horrid,
nasty, crawly Toad! And in my nice clean barge, too! Now that is a
thing that I will _not_ have."

She relinquished th