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rted as before.
Mole rubbed his eyes and stared at Rat, who was looking about him in a puzzled sort of way. `I beg your pardon; what did you say, Rat?' he asked.
`I think I was only remarking,' said Rat slowly, `that this was the right sort of place, and that here, if anywhere, we should find him. And look! Why, there he is, the little fellow!' And with a cry of delight he ran towards the slumbering Portly.
But Mole stood still a moment, held in thought. As one wakened suddenly from a beautiful dream, who struggles to recall it, and can re-capture nothing but a dim sense of the beauty of it, the beauty! Till that, too, fades away in its turn, and the dreamer bitterly accepts the hard, cold waking and all its penalties; so Mole, after struggling with his memory for a brief space, shook his head sadly and followed the Rat.
Portly woke up with a joyous squeak, and wriggled with pleasure at the sight of his father's friends, who had played with him so often in past days. In a moment, however, his face grew blank, and he fell to hunting round in a circle with pleading whine. As a child that has fallen happily asleep in its nurse's arms, and wakes to find itself alone and laid in a strange place, and searches corners and cupboards, and runs from room to room, despair growing silently in its heart, even so Portly searched the island and searched, dogged and unwearying, till at last the black moment came for giving it up, and sitting down and crying bitterly.
The Mole ran quickly to comfort the little animal; but Rat, lingering, looked long and doubtfully at certain hoof-marks deep in the sward.
`Some--great--animal--has been here,' he murmured slowly and thoughtfully; and stood musing, musing; his mind strangely stirred.
`Come along, Rat!' called the Mole. `Think of poor Otter, waiting up there by the ford!'
Portly had soon been comforted by the promise of a treat--a jaunt on the river in Mr. Rat's real boat; and the two animals conducted him to the water's side, p