“Then isn’t he quite as useful?” said Tommy Smith; but as the frog didn’t seem to hear, he went on with—“Then I will not hurt him any more than I will you.”
“Come along, then,” said the frog; and he began to hop in front of the little boy until they came to the shrubbery, where, in the mould beside a laurel bush, there sat a great, solemn-looking toad.
“I have brought someone to see you,” said the frog. “This is little Tommy Smith, who used to be such a bad boy, and kill every animal he saw; but now he has promised not to hurt either of us.”
“I am glad to hear it,” answered the toad, “and I hope he will soon learn to leave other creatures alone too. Well, what is it he wants?”
“He wants to see you change your skin,” said the frog.
“He had better look at me, then,” said the toad, “for that is just what I am doing.”
Tommy Smith bent down to look, and then he saw that the toad was wriggling about in rather a funny way, as if he was a little uncomfortable. He noticed, too, that his skin had split along the back, and it seemed to be wrinkling up and getting loose all over him, although it had been too tight before. This loose skin was dirty and old-looking, but underneath it, where it was split, Tommy Smith could see a nice new one that looked ever so much better. The more the toad wriggled, the looser the old skin got, and it was soon plain that he was wriggling himself out of it, just as you might wriggle your hand out of an old glove. At last he had got right out of it, and there lay the old skin on the ground.
“You see,” said the frog, “that is how we change our skin, just as you would change a suit of clothes. Does he not look handsome in his new one?”
“Very handsome—for a toad,” said Tommy Smith. (The toad only heard the first two words of this, so he was very pleased.) “But what is he doing with his old skin, now that he has got it off?”