: Kenneth Grahame
: The Wind in the Willows
: OTB eBook publishing
: 9783956760532
: 1
: CHF 1.80
:
: Erzählende Literatur
: English
: 176
: kein Kopierschutz
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB

At the start of the book, it is spring time: the weather is fine, and good-natured Mole loses patience with spring cleaning. He flees his underground home, heading up to take in the air. He ends up at the river, which he has never seen before. Here he meets Ratty (a water rat), who at this time of year spends all his days in, on and close by the river. Rat takes Mole for a ride in his rowing boat. They get along well and spend many more days boating, with Rat teaching Mole the ways of the river. One summer day shortly thereafter, Rat and Mole find themselves near the grand Toad Hall and pay a visit to Toad. Toad is rich (having inherited wealth from his father): jovial, friendly and kind-hearted but aimless and conceited, he regularly becomes obsessed with current fads, only to abandon them as quickly as he took them up. Having only recently given up boating, Toad's current craze is his horse-drawn caravan. In fact, he is about to go on a trip, and persuades the reluctant Rat and willing Mole to join him. The following day (after Toad has already tired of the realities of camp life and sleeps-in to avoid chores), a passing motorcar scares the horse, causing the caravan to overturn into a ditch. Rat does a war dance and threatens to have the law on the motorcar drivers while Mole calms the horse, but this marks the immediate end of Toad's craze for caravan travel, to be replaced with an obsession for motorcars. When the three animals get to the nearest town, they have Toad go to the police station to make a complaint against the vandals and their motorcar and thence to a blacksmith to retrieve and mend the caravan. Toad - in thrall to the experience of his encounter - refuses. Rat and Mole find an inn from where Mr. Toad's horse is taken care of and they organise the necessary steps and, exhausted, return home by train. Meanwhile, Toad makes no effort to help, instead deciding to order himself a motorcar. (Excerpt from Wikipedia)

II. THE OPEN ROAD


'Ratty,' said the Mole suddenly, one bright summer morning, 'if you please, I want to ask you a favour.'

The Rat was sitting on the river bank, singing a little song. He had just composed it himself, so he was very taken up with it, and would not pay proper attention to Mole or anything else. Since early morning he had been swimming in the river, in company with his friends the ducks. And when the ducks stood on their heads suddenly, as ducks will, he would dive down and tickle their necks, just under where their chins would be if ducks had chins, till they were forced to come to the surface again in a hurry, spluttering and angry and shaking their feathers at him, for it is impossible to say quite ALL you feel when your head is under water. At last they implored him to go away and attend to his own affairs and leave them to mind theirs. So the Rat went away, and sat on the river bank in the sun, and made up a song about them, which he called

            'DUCKS' DITTY.'

          All along the backwater,
          Through the rushes tall,
          Ducks are a-dabbling,
          Up tails all!
          Ducks' tails, drakes' tails,
          Yellow feet a-quiver,
          Yellow bills all out of sight
          Busy in the river!

          Slushy green undergrowth
          Where the roach swim—
          Here we keep our larder,
          Cool and full and dim.

          Everyone for what he likes!
         We like to be
          Heads down, tails up,
          Dabbling free!

          High in the blue above
          Swifts whirl and call—
         We are down a-dabbling
          Uptails all!

'I don't know that I think so VERY much of that little song, Rat,' observed the Mole cautiously. He was no poet himself and didn't care who knew it; and he had a candid nature.

'Nor don't the ducks neither,' replied the Rat cheerfully. 'They say,"WHY can't fellows be allowed to do what they like WHEN they like and AS they like, instead of other fellows sitting on banks and watching them all the time and making remarks and poetry and things about them? What NONSENSE it all is!" That's what the ducks say.'

'So it is, so it is,' said the Mole, with great heartiness.

'No, it isn't!' cried the Rat indignantly.

'Well then, it isn't, it isn't,' replied the Mole soothingly. 'But what I wanted to ask you was, won't you take me to call on Mr. Toad? I've heard so much about him, and I do so want to make his acquaintance.'

'Why, certainly,' said the good-natured Rat, jumping to his feet and dismissing poetry