Free The Willows in Winter by William Horwood, Patrick Benson

and open
some waiting champagne.
    “No!” cried Toad with sudden desperation,
reaching forward over the fuselage to the pilot in front and digging his
fingers into his shoulders. “Do not land! Up we go once more!”
    The pilot obeyed, suspecting some danger he had
not seen, no doubt all the more convinced that something was awry because all
the exultant triumph that had been in Toad’s voice earlier was now replaced by
trepidation and concern.
    “What’s wrong?” shouted the pilot over his
shoulder.
    “We cannot land! We must not land!” was all the
panicking Toad could say.
    “Can’t stay up for more than a few minutes,”
cried the pilot, “for the fuel’s running out. What’s the problem?”
    “Them!” responded Toad most dolefully, pointing
a wind-lashed finger towards two stolid and stern figures who stood waiting on
the ground below.
    “It’s just a couple of fellows come to
—”They’re not ‘just’ anything,” said Toad, now rather wishing that he did not
have quite so many cushions beneath him so that he could make himself a little
less conspicuous: “They’re troublemakers, spoilers, and they will cause us
difficulties!”
    “Well, we must go down all the same,” said the
pilot, who refused thereafter to listen to Toad’s wails and pleas and began the
landing once more.
    Just as Toad had feared, they pulled up to a
standstill right where the Badger and the Water Rat waited so ominously, their
brows furrowed, their looks disappointed but determined. Toad’s heart sank and
he wondered how he might best effect an escape and hide till they, and the
unpleasantness they were so unnecessarily bringing with them, went away Out of
sight would be out of mind as far as he was concerned, and then his pleasures
and excitements in the contemplation of the solo flights yet to come might be
unalloyed by accusation and admonition.
    But as he pulled the flying goggles from his
eyes, and looked about, he could see there was no easy way to leap clear of the
machine and make a dash for cover. There was nothing for it but to face them
out and send them packing if they tried to cause trouble.
    “Well, well!” he cried, as he clambered in an
ungainly way to the ground. “Welcome to Toad Hall, my good friends!”
    “Toad —” began the Badger in the severest of
voices.

    “No, no’ continued Toad, “do not embarrass me
with praise concerning today’s extraordinary flight. Tomorrow’s will —”
    “Toad!” essayed the Rat this time, his voice
dark in its warning tone, and his eyes narrowing.
    “My dear fellow,” said Toad hastily, as a
clever ruse came to him, one that would surely make both of them forget
whatever it was they had come about and lose themselves in the excitement of
what he was offering them, “my dear friends — I am delighted that you are here,
and edified, and it saves me the trouble, though it would have been no trouble
at all, of sending you the invitation that I had intended to send this very
evening, an invitation to have a flight in my marvellous flying machine, with
myself as your pilot and guide!”
    “Toad’ said the Badger very quietly, coming
closer, so that he looked down at Toad, and Toad was forced to look up at him,
“we shall leave to one side your secret acquisition of this — this thing, and
say only that it is possible, just possible, that you may redeem yourself
before further damage is done by making it available for one more flight before
it is returned forever to wherever you stole it from.”
    “Returned?” faltered Toad. “Returned?”
    “Returned!” agreed the Rat.
    “But it is not stolen ! ”
protested the grief-stricken Toad. “That it is not stolen is the only good
thing I have heard today,” said the Badger, “though why you should waste your
money — but enough of that. Would you like to know why we need it?”
    “Well I would, of course I would, though I
daresay you wanted to try it out yourselves, and of course you can and
you