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Dear old Badger! Nobody interferes with him. They'd better not," he added significantly. "Why, who should interfere with him?" asked the Mole. "Well, of course there are others," explained the Rat in a hesitating sort of way. "Weasels and stoats and foxes and so on.
Stop crying. We're going to let bygones be bygones, and try and turn over a new leaf. But what the Mole says is quite true. The stoats are on guard, at every point, and they make the best sentinels in the world. It's quite useless to think of attacking the place. They're too strong for us. 'Then it's all over, sobbed the Toad, crying into the sofa cushions.
'While you were riding about the country in expensive motor-cars, and galloping proudly on blood-horses, and breakfasting on the fat of the land, those two poor devoted animals have been camping out in the open, in every sort of weather, living very rough by day and lying very hard by night; watching over your house, patrolling your boundaries, keeping a constant eye on the stoats and the weasels, scheming and planning and contriving how to get your property back for you.
He could hear no sound around him, only the burst and the bang of the guns in the woods, and he might have been alone; but directly he came to another hedge, and swung down to it at right angles, a furry tail with a paint-brush tip, vanishing round a holly-stem, fetching him up all standing. They were there, too, those stoats.
In truth, the civets are much nearer in resemblance to weasels than the otters are; and these two last are generally classed together the otters being neither more nor less than water weasels. We shall first consider the true Weasels: that is, the Weasels, Stoats, Ferrets, Polecats, and Martens.
I. A word then, first, about the covering wing. Now, the main idea in this image is, as I have suggested, that of the expanded pinion, beneath the shelter of which the callow young lie, and are guarded. Whatever kites may be in the sky, whatever stoats and weasels may be in the hedges, the brood are safe there.
'O, I know, I know, said the Badger gloomily. 'But the thing had to be done. This good fellow has got to live here, and hold his own, and be respected. Would you have him a common laughing-stock, mocked and jeered at by stoats and weasels? 'Of course not, said the Rat. 'And, talking of weasels, it's lucky we came upon that little weasel, just as he was setting out with Toad's invitations.
Weasels, stoats, and ferrets will creep in at a very small crevice. The hen should be under a coop, in a warm place exposed to the sun, for the first three or four weeks; and the young ones should not be suffered to wander about in the dew, at morning or evening. Twelve eggs are enough to put under a turkey; and when she is about to lay, lock her up till she has laid every morning.
They were all as nervous and flustered as could be, running all ways at once, and falling over each other, and every one giving orders to everybody else and not listening; and the Sergeant kept sending off parties of stoats to distant parts of the grounds, and then sending other fellows to fetch 'em back again; and I heard them saying to each other, "That's just like the weasels; they're to stop comfortably in the banqueting-hall, and have feasting and toasts and songs and all sorts of fun, while we must stay on guard in the cold and the dark, and in the end be cut to pieces by bloodthirsty Badgers!"
All Nature was smiling and gay. There was nothing sinister in the look of the trees or the road or anything. Dogs are said to have inside instincts that warn them of intending perils, but Pincher was not a bit instinctive that day somehow. He sported gaily up and down the hedge-banks after pretending rats, and once he was so excited that I believe he was playing at weasels and stoats.
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