Mole was greatly cheered by the sound of the Rat’s careless laughter, as well as by the sight of his stick and his gleaming pistols, and he stopped shivering and began to feel bolder and more himself again.
‘Now then,’ said the Rat presently, ‘we really must pull ourselves together and make a start for home while there’s still a little light left. It will never do to spend the night here, you understand. Too cold, for one thing.’
‘Dear Ratty,’ said the poor Mole, ‘I’m dreadfully sorry, but I’m simply dead beat and that’s a solid fact. You must let me rest here a while longer, and get my strength back, if I’m to get home at all.’
‘O, all right,’ said the good-natured Rat, ‘rest away. It’s pretty nearly pitch dark now, anyhow; and there ought to be a bit of a moon later.’
So the Mole got well into the dry leaves and stretched himself out, and presently dropped off into sleep, though of a broken and troubled sort; while the Rat covered himself up, too, as best he might, for warmth, and lay patiently waiting, with a pistol in his paw.
When at last the Mole woke up, much refreshed and in his usual spirits, the Rat said, ‘Now then! I’ll just take a look outside and see if everything’s quiet, and then we really must be off.’
He went to the entrance of their retreat and put his head out. Then the Mole heard him saying quietly to himself, ‘Hullo! hullo! here – is – a – go!’
‘What’s up, Ratty?’ asked the Mole.
‘Snow is up,’ replied the Rat briefly; ‘or rather, down. It’s snowing hard.’
The Mole came and crouched beside him, and, looking out, saw the wood that had been so dreadful to him in quite a changed aspect. Holes, hollows, pools, pitfalls, and other black menaces to the way-farer were vanishing fast, and a gleaming carpet of faery was springing up everywhere, that looked too delicate to be trodden upon by rough feet. A fine powder filled the air and caressed the cheek with a tingle in its touch, and the black boles of the trees showed up in a light that seemed to come from below.
‘Well, well, it can’t be helped,’ said the Rat after pondering. ‘We must make a start, and take our chance, I suppose. The worst of it is, I don’t exactly know where we are. And now this snow makes everything look so very different.’
It did indeed. The Mole would not have known that it was the same wood. However, they set out bravely, and took the line that seemed most promising, holding on to each other and pretending with invincible cheerfulness that they recognised an old friend in every fresh tree that grimly and silently greeted them, or saw openings, gaps, or paths with a familiar turn in them, in the monotony of white space and black tree-trunks that refused to vary.
An hour or two later – they had lost all count of time – they pulled up, dispirited, weary, and hopelessly at sea, and sat down on a fallen tree-trunk to recover their breath and consider what was to be done. They were aching with fatigue and bruised with tumbles; they had fallen into several holes and got wet through; the snow was getting so deep that they could hardly drag their little legs through it, and the trees were thicker and more like each other than ever. There seemed to be no end to this wood, and no beginning, and no difference in it, and, worst of all, no way out.
‘We can’t sit here very long,’ said the Rat. ‘We shall have to make another push for it, and do something or other. The cold is too awful for anything, and the snow will soon be too deep for us to wade through.’ He peered about him and considered. ‘Look here,’ he went on, ‘this is what occurs to me. There’s a sort of dell down there in front of us, where the ground seems all hilly and humpy and hummocky. We’ll make our way down into that, and try and find some sort of shelter, a cave or hole with a dry floor to it, out of the snow and the wind, and there we’ll have a good rest before we try again, for we’re both of us pretty dead beat. Besides, the snow may leave off, or something may turn up.’
So once more they got on their feet, and struggled down into the dell, where they hunted about for a cave or some corner that was dry and a protection from the keen wind and the whirling snow. They were investigating one of the hummocky bits the Rat had spoken of, when suddenly the Mole tripped up and fell forward on his face with a squeal.
‘O, my leg!’ he cried. ‘O, my poor shin!’ and he sat up on the snow and nursed his leg in both his front paws.
‘Poor old Mole!’ said the Rat kindly. ‘You don’t seem to be having much luck to-day, do you? Let’s have a look at the leg. Yes,’ he went on, going down on his knees to look, ‘you’ve cut your shin, sure enough. Wait till I get at my handkerchief, and I’ll tie it up for you.’
‘I must have tripped over a hidden branch or a stump,’ said the Mole miserably. ‘O my! O my!’
‘It’s a very clean cut,’ said the Rat, examining it again attentively. ‘That was never done by a branch or a stump. Looks as if it was made by a sharp edge of something in metal. Funny!’ He pondered a while, and examined the humps and slopes that surrounded them.
‘Well, never mind what done it,’ said the Mole, forgetting his grammar in his pain. ‘It hurts just the same, whatever done it.’
But the Rat, after carefully tying up the leg with his handkerchief, had left him and was busy scraping in the snow. He scratched and shovelled and explored, all four legs working busily, while the Mole waited impatiently, remarking at intervals, ‘O, come on, Rat!’
Suddenly the Rat cried ‘Hooray!’ and then ‘Hooray- oo-ray-oo-ray-oo-ray!’ and fell to executing a feeble jig in the snow.
‘What have you found, Ratty?’ asked the Mole, still nursing his leg.
‘Come and see!’ said the delighted Rat, as he jigged on.
The Mole hobbled up to the spot and had a good look.
‘Well,’ he said at last, slowly, ‘I see it right enough. Seen the same sort of thing before, lots of times. Familiar object, I call it. A door-scraper! Well, what of it? Why dance jigs round a door-scraper?’
‘But don’t you see what it means, you – you dull-witted animal?’ cried the Rat impatiently.
‘Of course I see what it means,’ replied the Mole. ‘It simply means that some very careless and forgetful person has left his door-scraper lying about in the middle of the Wild Wood, just where it’s sure to trip everybody up. Very thoughtless of him, I call it. When I get home I shall go and complain about it to – to somebody or other, see if I don’t!’
‘O dear! O dear!’ cried the Rat, in despair at his obtuseness. ‘Here, stop arguing and come and scrape!’ And he set to work again and made the snow fly in all directions around him.
After some further toil his efforts were rewarded, and a very shabby door-mat lay exposed to view.
‘There, what did I tell you?’ exclaimed the Rat in great triumph.
‘Absolutely nothing whatever,’ replied the Mole, with perfect truthfulness. ‘Well now,’ he went on, ‘you seem to have found another piece of domestic litter, done for and thrown away, and I suppose you’re perfectly happy. Better go ahead and dance
