THE MOLE had long wanted to make the acquaintance of the Badger.  He seemed, by all accounts, to be such an important personage and, though rarely visible, to make his unseen influene felt by everybody about the place.  But wheneve the Mole mentioned his wish to the Water Rat he always found himself put off.  "It's all right," the Rat would say, "Badger'll turn up some day or other - he's always turning up - and then I'll introduce you.  The best of fellows!  But you must not only take him as you find him, but when you find him."

"Couldn't you ask him here - dinner or some thing?" said the Mole.

"He wouldn't come," replied the Rat simply.  "Badger hates Society, and invitations, and dinner, and all that sort of thing."

"Well, then, supposing we go and call on him?" suggested the Mole.

"Oh, I'm sure he wouldn't like that at all," said the Rat,quite alarmed.  "He's so very shy, he'd be sure to be offended.  I've never even ventured to call on him at his home myself, though I know him so well.  Besides, we can't.  It's quite out of the question, because he lives in the very middle of the Wild Wood."

"Well, supposing he does," said the Mole.  "You told me the Wild Wood was all right, you know."
"Oh, I know, I know, so it is," replied the Rat evasively.  "But I think we won't go there just now.  Not just yet.  It's a long way, and he wouldn't be at home at this time of year anyhow, and he'll be coming along some day, if you'll wait quietly."

The Mole had to be content with this.  But the Badger never came along, and every day brought its amusements, and it was not till summer was long over, and cold and frost and miry ways kept them much indoors, and the swollen river raced past outside their windows with a speed that mocked at boating of any sort or kind, that he found his thoughts dwelling again with much persistence on the solitary gray Badger, who lived own life by himself, in his hole in the middle of the Wild Wood.