Exam Week: Toad's Intervention

This is an oral retelling, by Cornflower, of an episode from Wind in the Willows:

What I like is when Mole comes into Rat’s house—I mean, no, not Mole, I mean Badger comes into Rat’s house and says to them, “Toad is not doing the right thing. He has bought a motor car,” said Badger. So they ate lunch and went to Toad Hall, and right as they were coming up the steps, Toad was coming down, and there was a shiny new motorcar. And he said, “You’re just out for a nice… nice, er… nice…” and his friends looked at him sternly. (Mole was with them.)

And Badger said to the guy with the motorcar, looking over his shoulder, “Toad won’t be needing you today,” so the motorcar was driven away, and Badger said to Toad, “The first thing you have to do is take off those ridiculous clothes!” But he refused. So he said to Mole and Rat, “Take those clothes off him.” So they struggled and struggled and finally got those ridiculous clothes off him. Then Badger told Toad to come with him to the Smoking Room. So they went in there, and Rat and Mole listened, and they could hear Toad crying and he had pledged to not touch a motorcar again.

And then Badger and Toad came out and Toad was still crying, and he sat down in a chair, and Badger told him, “Tell these folks what you have just said to me.” And he refused. So then Badger said to Mole what he had said to them. He had pledged not to touch another motorcar again! But then Toad said, “I don’t say that! I’m not sorry at all!!” So then they took him and scrambled up the stairs with him, and then they locked him in his bedroom, and then one day when Rat was—they were taking turns in his bedroom to sleep with him—and then one day when Rat was with him—it was a beautiful summer morning, and he told Toad to wake up. So he woke up and said, “Rat, I don’t feel so well. Will you go get a doctor?” So Rat ran off to get a doctor, and he snuck out the window and took a walk down to town!

And then he got to a restaurant and ate there. And then he heard the same noise: Put-put-put-put-put-put-put. A motorcar, he thought! And then some people came in. He didn’t pay for his bill, and walked out, and he said he wanted to look at the motorcar, so he went out and looked at the motorcar, and it was so beautiful he just had to touch it, so he touched it, and then—he just thought it wouldn’t hurt to sit in it, or drive it around. So then he drove it around. Then the police caught him, knowing that Toad did not own a motorcar! And he was sent to jail.

His friends were trying to help him. If he kept his pledge, he wouldn’t have been in jail. Poor Toad.