“There’s only one thing more to be done,” continued the gratified Badger. “Toad, I want you solemnly to repeat, before your friends here, what you fully admitted to me in the smoking-room just now. First, you are sorry for what you’ve done, and you see the folly of it all?”

There was a long, long pause. Toad looked desperately this way and that, while the other animals waited in grave silence. At last he spoke.

“No!” he said, a little sullenly, but stoutly; “I’m not sorry. And it wasn’t folly at all! It was simply glorious!”

“What?” cried the Badger, greatly scandalised. “You backsliding animal, didn’t you tell me just now, in there⁠—”