The Willows and Beyond by Kenneth Grahame, William Horwood, Patrick Benson Read Free Book Online Page B

thing I can do for him, which will let me die in the hope he’s got a bit of a start in life, is to send him to you. Seeing as I don’t have enough to buy a ticket for him as a passenger, except to get him as far as Sicily, where I don’t put his chances too high, I thought I’d send him by the Colonial Royal Mail, which will give him feed and water, and get him home safer than if he was the Crown Jewels, which to me he is.
    “So that’s the long and short of it. There should be a bit of change left over, which you’re welcome to, and I know he’ll more than make up for the trouble he’s causing you. Don’t mind if he don’t say much till he’s near water. He don’t like to be away from it too long. Farewell, old shipmate, and look after my lad for me proper, and teach him all you know And don’t let him wander off till he’s learnt how to settle down, as you have but I never did.
    “Regulations won’t allow livestock to have baggage, but then seafarers like me travel light. Still, I’ve hung me old marlin spike about his neck so he’ll have something to remember me by. I’ve had it since my first ship and now it’ll have to travel on without me.
    “Your old friend,
    “Sea Rat.”

    Ratty stood in silence for a moment, and then signalled to Mole to come with him out of the cage.
    “Whatever am I going to do, Mole? I can’t possibly take him home with me. Yet I can’t very well leave him here, can I? Why this young rat is absolutely nothing to do with me, and it is very presumptuous of that old sea dog —”
    “You haven’t forgotten him, then?”
    “Of course not. I have often thought of him, but now —“But now he’s gone, Ratty, as we all will one day and he’s left you the only thing he had to leave.”
    “Well, I suppose you could put it that way”
    “And he has entrusted that ‘item’ to the only animal in all the world — and I daresay he met a great many in his time — upon whom he felt he could rely”
    “Well… “began the Rat, weakening. But then he looked down the aisle to that unkempt, dirtily dressed stranger, and he thought of his own small quarters, shipshape and orderly No, he couldn’t possibly.
    “I won’t do it, Mole!” cried Ratty. “Why, if I let go of the tiller now upon the stormy and uncertain waters of the Sea Rat’s presumption, and your wrong-headed persuasion, there’s no knowing where I’ll run aground!”
    “And what did you advise when Nephew turned up at my door, Ratty?” said the Mole, who in circumstances such as these could be formidable. “Did you tell me to send him packing?”
    “No, I suppose I didn’t.”
    “Did you not tell me to put up with it? Did you not suggest that it might even do me some good?”
    “I suppose I might have said some such thing,” conceded the Rat grudgingly.
    “And that it might make me a little less self—centred?”
    “Yes, yes, Mole, I did think those things, and I do think them. But Nephew is one thing, and a relative to boot; but this young fellow… why no, I won’t do it and that’s final!”
    With a fierce and irritable look on his face, Ratty turned back to the cage to give his decision.
    The youngster looked very frightened and sorry for himself. He certainly was grubby, and hungry, too.
    “Well, sir,” said the Post Office official, joining them once more. “Having seen the item, are you to accept it or send it back? Naturally it makes no difference to us, as under recent agreements with the government of Egypt return passage is paid for in the case of non-acceptance, and in the circumstances I would quite understand.”
    “Humph,” said the Rat, glowering.
    “If you won’t, Ratty,” cried the Mole, much distressed, “let me take him in, for though my home is small, I can surely find space!”
    “Ah!” said the Post Office official. “Now that would not be permitted, no, not at all. It must be the addressee who accepts, or nobody, and as I say, returns of such items are quite a