Roddy McDowall: Ratty

The Wind in the Willows

Ratty

Badger: We're attacking Toad Hall tonight.
Mr. Toad: Right! Oh! Oh, with armies, and navies, and...
Badger: No, no, no, just *ourselves*.
Mr. Toad: [sadly] A bit of a comedown on that. Hmm. We'll never get past the sentries.
Ratty: We are *not* going PAST them! We are going unnnnnder them.
Moley: Gonna use the secret tunnel to Toad Hall.
Mr. Toad: Splendid idea!

Ratty: If you believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing, half so worth doing as - simply messing around in boats!

Mr. Toad: Oh, what dust clouds I shall make! What carts I shall fling into the ditch!
Ratty: [sternly] Toad, come down here!
Mr. Toad: As you wish, Ratty.

Mr. Toad: As penance, I shall build you a new boat. An-and wear the washerwoman's dress to the end of my miserable day.
[seeing the hatrack empty, but still peering around it]
Mr. Toad: Hello, where is it? I-I left it hanging right here.
Ratty: The dress? Oh, Mole took it out before.
Mr. Toad: Mole? Really? Hm, didn't think him the type.

Moley: [as Ratty starts digging snow away to reveal Badger's doorscraper] Wha - what're you doin'? My leg *hurts*!
Ratty: [stops digging when he sees half the doorscraper] Oh, ha-ha! Bravo!
[starts dancing triumphantly]
Ratty: Aha - bra - vo, I found whatcha tripped over!
Moley: *What*? Ho - how?
Ratty: [digging more snow to reveal the other half of the doorscraper] Look, see? It's a doorscraper.
Moley: A what?
Ratty: Used to scrape mud off the boots.

Moley: Ah dear, ther-there's no bread. An-and no butter!
Mr. Toad: No bread? But I distinctly recall purchasing several crisp baguettes this morning, along with some marvelous French "beurre", butter to you.
Ratty: [going inside the wagon] Wouldn't it be in there, right next to the pate de foie gras?

Ratty: [rummaging through the wagon for pate de foie gras] Not only is there not any pate de foie gras, there's no champagne!
[peering out the wagon door towards Toad, calls to him accusingly]
Ratty: [scoffs] *You* have forgotten everything!
Mr. Toad: Oh, surely there's *something*.
Moley: There's *nothing*!
Ratty: It would be easier to say what we *don't* have.

Moley: [after Ratty dances next to Badger's doorscraper a second time] How dare you dance a jig around a doorscraper while my leg is throbbing?
Ratty: [impatiently but stiffly] But don't you see what that means, you dull-witted animal?

Mr. Toad: Shall we have some dinner? Filet mignon, crepes, lobster, a Peking duck?
Ratty: There's a banquet for you. I know some animals who would give their ears to be sitting down to supper with us tonight.

Ratty: What good is poetry when everybody's moving on? Hm - everyone but me. And to think, a road goes past my very door, and I only know a mile or two of it.

Moley: Ratty... Ratty?
Ratty: [yawning twice] It's time for a nap.
Moley: [stutters as Ratty yawns twice again] But I uh, uh, uh, before you slip off, uh-uh... uh, Ratty?
Ratty: [mildly annoyed] Huh? What is it?
Moley: Couldn't we invite Badger over? I-I haven't met him yet.
Ratty: I've told you a thousand times...
[yawns]
Ratty: he'd never come.
Moley: Oh uh, Ratty, Ratty?
Ratty: [more annoyed than before] Uh... wha--*what*?
Moley: But suppose we call on *him*?
Ratty: *Nooooo*! He hates company, society invitations, all that sort of...
[yawns briefly, as he curls into a fetal position]
Ratty: thing.
Moley: Well, we could chance it.
[clearing his throat]
Moley: All he could do is turn us out.
Ratty: [irritated as he rises to ultimately warn Moley in an arm-flailing manner] He lives in the middle Wild Wood, and nobody would *dare* the Terror of the Wild Wood at this time of year.
Moley: [trying to retreat back] But, but uh...
Ratty: It's a long way, and *much* too dangerous!

Ratty: Help me right the boat, then we'll both row down to Toad Hall, and I'm going to give him what for.
Moley: Together?
Ratty: Of course.
Moley: After all these years alone in the hole, I would thoroughly enjoy doing something - together.

Ratty: [glancing toward Badger's doormat] Look. A doormat.
Moley: So - can we eat a doormat, or can we sleep under a doormat, or ride home in the snow on it, you exasperating rodent?
Ratty: [sneeringly] Doesn't it tell you anything?
Moley: Whoever heard of a doormat telling - ?
Ratty: Not another word, you thick-headed beast. Dig.
[he and Moley dig snow around Badger's home till it all collapses to reveal his home]

Ratty: [voiceover] My new friend, Mole, had entered into the joy of running water, and for the first time in his life he heard the sound of the wind in the reeds and willows.

Ratty: [with a dreamy look on his face at first, then looking up briefly] The song has died away into reed-talk.
Moley: But what do the words mean?
Ratty: Ah, that I don't know. I really passed them onto you the way they reached me.

Ratty: [as he and Moley stare at the bed sheets hanging from the window that Toad used to escape from Toad Hall] He did awfully well.
Badger: He did *you* awfully well. Well - we'd better stay here for a while. Toad may be brought back at any moment, on a stretcher or between two policemen.