"My opinion is that the snail is no better than a spy and a common informer. Do you just look round and turn over any leaves that are near, lest any should be here, and tell tales about me. I can tell you, it is a very dangerous thing to talk about Kapchack, somebody or other is sure to hear, and to go and tell him, so as to get into favour. Now, that is what I hate. All the rabbits and hares (and your friend the hare that lives at the top of the Home Field), and the squirrel and the mouse, all of them have to do just the same as the birds, and send messages to Kapchack, praising him and promising to do exactly as he tells them, all except Choo Hoo."
"Who is Choo Hoo?" said Bevis.
"Choo Hoo is the great wood-pigeon," said the toad. "He is a rebel; but I cannot tell you much about him, for it is only of late years that we have heard anything of him, and I do not know much about the present state of things. Most of the things I can tell you happened, or began, a long time ago. If you want to know what is going on now, the best person you can go to is the squirrel. He is a very good fellow; he can tell you. I will give you a recommendation to him, or perhaps he will be afraid to open his mouth too freely; for, as I said before, it is a very dangerous thing to talk about Kapchack, and everybody is most terribly afraid of him—he is so full of malice."
"Why ever do they let him be king?" said Bevis; "I would not, if I were them. Why ever do they put up with him, and his cruelty and greediness? I will tell the thrush and the starling not to endure him any longer."
"Pooh! pooh!" said the toad. "It is all very well for you to say so, but you must excuse me for saying, my dear Sir Bevis, that you really know very little about it. The thrush and the starling would not understand what you meant. The thrush's father always did as Kapchack told him, and sang his praises, as I told you, and so did his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, and all his friends and relations, these years and years past. So that now the thrushes have no idea of there being no Kapchack. They could not understand you, if you tried to explain to them how nice it would be without him. If you sat in your swing and talked to them all day long, for all the summer through, they would only think you very stupid even to suppose such a state of things as no Kapchack. Quite impossible, Bevis dear!—excuse me correcting you. Why, instead of liking it, they would say it would be very dreadful to have no Kapchack."
"Well, they are silly!" said Bevis. "But you do not like Kapchack!"
"No, I do not," said the toad; "and if you will stoop down again——(Bevis stooped still nearer.) No; perhaps you had better lie down on the grass! There—now I can talk to you quite freely. The fact is, do you know, there are other people besides me who do not like Kapchack. The crow—I can't have anything to do with such an old rogue!—the crow, I am certain, hates Kapchack, but he dares not say so. Now I am so old, and they think me so stupid and deaf that people say a good deal before me, never imagining that I take any notice. And when I have been out of a dewy evening, I have distinctly heard the crow grumbling about Kapchack. The crow thinks he is quite as clever as Kapchack, and would make quite as good a king.
"Nor is the rat satisfied, nor the weasel, nor the hawk. I am sure they are not, but they cannot do anything alone, and they are so suspicious of each other they cannot agree. So that, though they are dissatisfied, they can do nothing. I daresay Kapchack knows it very well indeed. He is so wise—so very, very wise—that he can see right into what they think, and he knows that they hate him, and he laughs in his sleeve. I will tell you what he does. He sets the hawk on against the rat, and the rat on against the crow, and the crow against the weasel. He tells them all sorts of things; so that the weasel thinks the crow tells tales about him, and the hawk thinks the rat has turned tail and betrayed his confidence. The result is, they hate one another as much as they hate him.
"And he told the rook—it was very clever of him to do so, yes, it was very clever of him, I must admit that Kapchack is extremely clever—that if he was not king somebody else would be, perhaps the hawk, or the rat. Now the rook told his friends at the rookery, and they told everybody else, and when people came to talk about it, they said it was very true. If Kapchack was not king, perhaps the hawk would be, and he would be as bad, or worse; or the rat, and he would be very much worse; or perhaps the weasel, the very worst of all.
"So they agreed that, rather than have these, they would have Kapchack as the least evil. When the hawk and the rat heard what the king had said, they hated each other ten times more than before, lest Kapchack—if ever he should give up the crown—should choose one or other of them as his successor, for that was how they understood the hint. Not that there is the least chance of his giving up the crown; not he, my dear, and he will never die, as everybody knows (here the toad winked slightly), and he will never grow any older; all he does is to grow wiser, and wiser, and wiser, and wiser. All the other birds die, but Kapchack lives for ever. Long live the mighty Kapchack!" said the toad very loud, that all might hear how loyal he was, and then went on speaking lower. "Yet the hawk, and the crow, and the rook, and the jay, and all of them, though they hate Kapchack in their hearts, all come round him bowing down, and they peck the ground where he has just walked, and kiss the earth he has stood on, in token of their humility and obedience to him. Each tries to outdo the rest in servility. They bring all the news to the palace, and if they find anything very nice in the fields, they send a message to say where it is, and leave it for him, so that he eats the very fat of the land."