On a pleasant evening, little Harry the hedgehog sat on his door-step and looked about at his neighbors. They were good neighbors; in fair weather and in foul they always spoke to each other when they met. There was the old gardener who lived next door: he had a black retriever, a foolish big dog that let all the people in the neighbourhood pat him, and he only wagged his tail and looked as foolish as could be; not like some. To be sure sometimes he answered back, but that was only to old Rogers the butcher’s bulldog, a hard, grim-looking creature who always wanted the last word.
When Harry found his neighbors at peace with each other, he stretched out his little paws in front of him and resolved not to stir for half-an-hour. Just then there was a great noise going on between the fat little hop-toad who lived next door and a really charming frog who came from a pond some distance off: between them they were making such a fuss as I never heard, up went lungs and back, and down went throats again, till it was enough to make a body quite deaf.
Just as I was in hopes that they were going to be quiet, and Harry, who was just beginning to go to sleep, shut both his little yellowish-brown eyes, out ran Rogers the butcher with a long thin piece of string.
“Hallo, hop-toad!” he said, “do come and help me with Kiddy. She won’t jump or dance if I shut her up with the green-baize door, and my customers complain it is too dark to see to choose their meat.”
Rogers was always very civil to the hop-toad, so he hopped across quickly and said, “Now, Kiddy, be quiet, please: it will be so much nicer for everybody.”
So Rogers tied her with the string he had brought. “Hoppity, hoppity!” cried the hop-toad; “I have no right to hold up a fat thing like you. Tell me what I am to do.”
“For the present,” said Rogers, “keep quiet!”
So off went Rogers, and the hop-toad held up Kiddy the black retriever, who looked very sad indeed at being tied up, and tiny Harry the hedgehog, who never liked to see his friend unhappy at anytime, especially as he was quite sure she could not gnaw the string.
In the deepest silence, Rogers tied Kiddy the dog to the hop-toad’s leg, and jumping on his legs good-naturedly, Kiddy trotted off quite happy. Of course Kiddy was far too big for Rogers to lift over the hop-toad’s leg, and so he very cleverly tied both the end of the hop-toad’s string and the other end of the string to the hop-toad’s leg.
Down went the hop-toad with a thump. “Hop, hop!” he said, struggling with the string. “Be a good little dog, Kiddy; don’t sit on me, you silly, dull, stupid beast, or you will crush me, not to say quarrel with the string.”
Then Rogers brought down his shop-lamp. The hop-toad used to sit or stand on the doormat; now he was compelled to mount on a little flag below the door in a spot Kan knew would never be damp, while Mrs Rogers screamed. Quite frightened at being tied to the hop-toad’s leg, and obliged to keep that careful little animal company to keep together, went a moan of poor Kiddy’s until she saw the shop-lamp lifted by some one and was sure her friend Harry the hedgehog was willing to help her.
So she knelt down with her fore-feet, blinked her poor eyes, and looked as straight as she could into Rogers’s lamp.
“See here, Kiddy” said Rogers. “Now, Harry! Now, hop-toad! Just come across the door a minute, and let Kiddy judge whether the light is better from the shop or the street. Now the street. The street! The—ow!”
Rogers stamped his foot, and the scream that Mrs Rogers gave was almost as loud and terrible.
“Did Kiddy scream?” asked the hop-toad.
“No, I didn’t scream,” said Rogers, “but the lamp is a lump of coal, and the butcher’s rubbing his foot.”
“Rubbing it!” said the hop-toad. “Feel it!”
He did, and said, “She has managed to hurt herself cleverly from here to the corner of the road.”
“Harry,” said the hop-toad. “Are you turning yellow with rage or fun?”
Rogers did not like saying anything before a lady, for he had been only half a year married.
“Well,” he said, “that old fool Rogers is such an idiot, Kiddy, you Lickety-split! When I was away agitating, I told him to fetch you, for, you know, he never sees out of the butcher’s shop, and put the right-leg hole of Mrs Butcher’s trousers instead of this shops with you.”
“Yes, on the whole,” said the one-legged hop-toad, “I believe it will be better for you all. The only bad part about it is that I did not those trousers myself; that crimson dust might have muddied you a little. Now, Kiddy! Quick movement! Fast motion! Trot on!”
As Kiddy broke hastily away, it put the hop-toad’s leg-paw quite into a knack. What a fuss everybody made! The hedgehog laughed. The black retriever laughed. The butcher and Mrs butcher, their lace-ruffled frocks gave every chance to their friends of seeing the ivory of their little bits of green legs, laughed till they cried.
So did Kiddy and the hop-toad. When everybody cried Kiddy and the hop-toad cried a little louder, and then they moved into the billiard-room and began to play whist, and brought down Eros Müller, the serio-comic, to supper.
I must tell you that as soon at the butcher’s allows that they have a supper on long platefuls, that Rogers first attacks what comes nearest to himself; that is to say, that he generally begins at the backside of the piece by the saddler’s and the handles of the knives, with which they eat the rheum blackbread of all sorts.
When they had done supper, Rogers said, “Now, you must go and fetch me a pair of pliers, Harry!”
“Those blue overhoes they use for jumping-stands are very handy,” said Kiddy?
“The cobbler has a lot of knife and fork and many sugar-tong-plated instruments, he said, and the hopping-boy is not there.”
Harry jumped over to his pile in the corner of the door, found the blue overhoes or what should have been hidden, as Kiddy called those delicate knives, tongs, and incarnated sugar-tongs.
Such a pair as Rogers!! Taking up the boxwood, the butcher bellowed, “Do you see these gloves? I wear them now I’m going to the cutting-board and blackbreat putting in the pan. The middle one dirties the knife so.”
Kiddy and the hop-toad grinned, and Harry said, “Butcher, you should have done yours all round.”
When Kiddy found with his lady-paw, who for ever scratched the wrong side of the pudding that was put on it, he came before Harry and the hop-toad saying, “I never had a butcher’s oppressive skin before. Have you done it?”
“No, certainly not yet,” said the hedgehog whimpering with delight, “but I mean. And then, you silly, stupid, hop-toad, you are joking and romancing.”
“Just wait. Why, Rogers! Here’s your pliers, happy little boxwood!”
“Happy! one-legged, unrivaled, quadruped, two-legged friend,” squeaked Rogers, “Do you mean to say that I stand on boxwood?”
“Yes, of the choicest sorts unknown to us. Kiddy, what is the Latin for box?”