The Wind in the Willows

Rat pulls Toad into his house. Dripping water and weeds, Toad excitedly begins to tell Rat of his recent, wondrous exploits. Rat stops him and orders him to go upstairs, wash up, and get into some fresh clothes. Toad wants to argue but notices in a mirror his bedraggled condition and quickly agrees.

He comes downstairs to a fine meal, during which he expands on his adventures. Rat listens but seems grave. He can’t see how imprisonment, hunger, terror, and insults can be fun: “When are you going to be sensible, and think of your friends, and try and be a credit to them?” (116)

Toad remembers it as great fun, but, somewhat humbled, he agrees to quit cars. He suggests motorboats instead, but Rat yells and stamps, and Toad quickly changes the subject. He determines to become respectable again, return to Toad Hall, and take up a quiet life.

Agitated, Rat explains that Toad Hall has been taken over by denizens of the Wild Wood. Mole and Badger tried to protect the place, but one stormy night, hundreds of weasels, ferrets, and stoats invaded the Hall, beat up Mole and Badger, and threw them out into the storm. The squatters have been eating Toad’s food and making a mess of the place ever since.

Incensed, Toad grabs a stick and storms up the road toward Toad Hall. At the gate, he’s confronted by a gun-toting ferret, who takes a shot at him. Toad hurries back to Rat’s place, commandeers Rat’s boat, and sculls up to where Toad Hall fronts the river. As he rows toward the boathouse, two stoats drop a stone into the boat, putting a hole in it, and it sinks.

Toad returns to Rat’s house. Rat, angry about the ruined boat and the spoiled clothes he loaned Toad, scolds him: “Really, Toad, of all the trying animals—I wonder you manage to keep any friends at all!” (120)

Toad’s ability to apologize abjectly wins back Rat’s friendship, as always. Toad consents to wait for Badger and Mole’s report; they’re camped out near the Hall, keeping watch and trying to plan a counterattack. Toad wants to join them and share their discomfort, but Rat serves dinner, and Toad immediately forgets his offer and digs in.

After the meal, Badger and Mole drop in. Muddy and tired, they sit and eat. Mole is delighted to see Toad, who promptly begins to boast about his recent escapades, which further annoys Rat. Mole and Badger report that the Hall is guarded all around by armed Wild Wooders who throw stones and laugh at them.

They all argue about what to do until Badger silences them. He finishes his meal and then scolds Toad for bringing dishonor upon his family line. Toad immediately sobs with regret, but Badger stops the tears by offering to tell him a secret. Toad can’t resist secrets because it’s tremendous fun to reveal them later to others.

Badger explains that, near Rat’s home, a tunnel leads straight into Toad Hall. Toad disbelieves this, but Badger says Toad’s father, a great man, revealed it to him and made him promise never to tell his son except in an emergency. Toad admits he’s a blabber, but that’s simply because he’s such a great conversationalist.

Badger says Otter went to the Hall dressed as a chimneysweep seeking work. While there, he learned of an upcoming banquet in honor of the Chief Weasel and heard that most of the invaders would be indoors partying without their weapons. Badger, Rat, Mole, and Toad plan to approach via the secret tunnel, enter the house, and subdue the interlopers.

For now, they retire to sleep. The next morning, Rat gathers weapons and handcuffs into four piles, one for each of them. Mole returns from Toad Hall. He reports that he disguised himself in Toad’s washerwoman costume, visited the Hall as if looking for laundry work, endured the stoats’ leering comments, and then loudly declared that more than 100 badgers, rats, and toads would attack them that night and wipe them out unless they left immediately. He ran off and then snuck back to watch the guards running about in a panic. Some expressed resentment that the weasels would enjoy a banquet while the stoats must face an oncoming attack.

Toad thinks Mole has ruined everything, but Badger congratulates Mole for his clever ruse. Toad is jealous and upset, so Mole takes him outside and listens admiringly while Toad tells exaggerated versions of his recent exploits. In fact, “much that he related belonged more properly to the category of what-might-have-happened-had-I-only-thought-of-it-in-time-instead-of ten-minutes-afterwards” (127).

At nightfall, Badger loads each of them with weapons. Carrying a lantern, he leads the group upriver to a hole in the bank. Mole follows, then Rat, and finally Toad. The first three hop over the edge into the hole, but Toad falls in the river and must be dried off. Badger warns him to be careful and quiet, or he’ll be “left behind.”

They walk through the dark, cold, damp tunnel. Toad begins to fall behind, and when Rat calls to him to hurry, he rushes forward and topples everyone. Badger, thinking it’s a rear attack, nearly shoots Toad. He wants to leave Toad behind, but the others vouch for him, and Rat walks behind him.

The passage rises up, and they can hear weasels carousing above them. The tunnel ends at a trap door; the banqueteers carry on so loudly that the four assailants enter the building without being heard. Standing in the butler’s pantry, they hear from the next room the Chief Weasel making fun of Toad, who, angered, must be restrained by his friends. The Chief begins to sing a ditty: “‘Toad he went a-pleasuring / Gaily down the street—” (130).

Badger and the others burst into the hall, yelling and swinging their cudgels. The weasels scatter in terror. Toad heads straight for the Chief Weasel and, with a single blow of his cudgel, sends the Chief clear across a table. The others knock down a dozen weasels and handcuff them while the rest escape through windows and chimney.

The victors prepare a meal. Mole steps outside and returns with several rifles: He reports that the stoats, thinking they were under attack by the escaping weasels, fought them, and the melee spilled into the river. All are now gone.

Badger has Mole lead the 12 prisoners upstairs, where they’re made to clean up the bedrooms with soap, water, and fresh bed sheets. Contritely, they do the cleanup, but they blame the stoats and the Chief Weasel. Mole gives them a bread roll each and releases them to scamper off into the night.

Toad sets aside his jealousy and thanks Mole for his good work. After dinner, they retire to the upstairs bedrooms for a good night’s sleep, “safe in Toad’s ancestral home, won back by matchless valour, consummate strategy, and a proper handling of sticks” (132).

The next morning, Badger tells Toad to write, on his personal stationery, invitations to a banquet for that afternoon. Badger will provide the food and will help deliver the invitations. Toad begins to grouse but then thinks better of it and agrees. He pens the letters, which include a program schedule of speeches and songs by himself. He answers the door and finds a timid weasel who offers to be of service. Toad hands him the invitations and hints that if the weasel gets them out properly, there might be a shilling in it for him.

At lunch, noting Toad’s sudden cockiness, Badger and Rat corner him and insist that there’ll be no speeches or songs from him. Toad acts as if this is a great tragedy, but he agrees and, wiping away tears, stumbles off. To Badger, Rat expresses relief that they caught the morning’s visiting weasel before he could deliver the invitations. Mole writes a new set of much more modest notices.

Upstairs, Toad arranges several chairs in a circle, locks the door, and sings a song of self-praise to an imaginary audience. Feeling better, he dresses and goes downstairs, where the guests await him. They break out in cheers and crowd around, but he insists that the credit should go to Badger, Mole, and Rat. While doing so, Toad notices with pleasure that, despite his modesty, he’s still “was an object of absorbing interest to every one” (137).

The banquet is a great success. Some of the guests call for Toad to give a speech or song, as in the old days, but he waves them off: “He was indeed an altered Toad!” (137)

The four friends resume their happy, if quieter, lives. Toad pays and thanks the jailer’s daughter and the train engineer for their help. Although somewhat peevish about it, he coughs up cash for the barge woman’s lost horse as well. It isn’t much, as the assessors decide that the “gipsy’s” payment was about what the horse was worth.

Now and then, the four friends stroll through the Wild Wood, where the other animals treat them respectfully. Mothers point out the four to their children and declare them great heroes. If the children later become difficult, their mothers warn them that Badger will come for them. In fact, Badger “was rather fond of children” and wouldn’t do such a thing, but the warning “never failed to have its full effect” (138).