She recited the poem to him, and the Jacky-Toad said it was fine talk, and managed to commit one verse to memory, though not without much difficulty. Then Mabel repeated several of the “Ancient and Modern Hymns,” and a rhymed alphabet, and some of Lear’s Nonsense Verses. The last pleased her pupil much, but she refused to permit him to learn any of them, explaining that knowledge of this description, though an elegant accomplishment, as in her case, would not add lasting lustre to the Jacky-Toad’s reputation.
Then some chance utterance reminded him of home, and he sighed and trimmed his lamp, and murmured a vague wish about moonlight and quaking-bogs.
“I believe sometimes you almost want to go back,” said Mabel coldly.
“Well, you do keep such a darnation tight hand ’pon me. Home’s home, when all’s said, if ’tis awnly a li’l’ cranny in a bog. Theer ban’t no comfort here, nor yet comp’ny, savin’ your presence.”
“You want to go back to those other wretched Jacky-Toads?”
“Ess fay, an’ show ’em all I’ve larned.”
“You’ve learnt absolutely nothing yet; and I’m not going to let you go back till you know at least the Kings of Israel and the multiplication table up to twelve times twelve, so you needn’t think it.”
But it is to be regretted that Mabel’s noble ambitions were never gratified. Of course, faults existed on both sides. She was exacting and impatient; the Jacky-Toad was obstinate. It is better to rule by love than fear if you are dealing with a Devon Jacky-Toad, but Mabel was too severe. She expected too much; she said hard things, none the pleasanter for being true; and the Jacky-Toad finally grew sullen, and refused to employ even that morsel of brain power which it had pleased Providence to bestow upon him. His health was partly to blame for this. Change of scene, night air, and the humid atmosphere of a quag are essential to the well-being of all Jacky-Toads; and this one languished under imprisonment, lost his temper all too often, and frequently swore in broad Devonshire, merely from the wicked desire to make Mabel angry. Once, when he said pointedly that she evidently had not the gift of teaching, she slapped him and dropped him head-first into his marmalade-jar. Then he turned round, said a thing not to be repeated here, and tried to bite her. Relations were strained henceforward, but though Mabel shed bitter tears over her failure to reach that nobler part of his nature which must not be denied even to a Jacky-Toad, she still had hope, and determined with praiseworthy pluck to conquer in the end.
Chance, however, defeated her resolves, and it happened that the Jacky-Toad’s longed-for opportunity to escape came at last. Needless to say he seized it. During a spring cleaning, a maid found the marmalade-jar while Mabel was at school, and, believing it empty, she threw it into the dustbin. From thence it was removed to a rubbish-heap, and a boy, seeing it lying there, immediately broke it with his catapult. Thus the prisoner found himself a free Jacky-Toad, and being happily gifted with that marvellous “homing” instinct so much admired in the carrier pigeon and humble-bee, he immediately rose to a considerable height in the air, dodged the smoke from a factory chimney, and proceeded as the crow flies, or is given credit for flying, to the West of England.