At the same moment a blue light flickered like a shooting-star above their heads, and, with the sound of a small bird alighting, the missing member of that community returned to his friends. Their welcome was, of course, hearty as need be, and from an attitude of absolute indifference one and all assumed the manner of affection, friendship and regard. Now the new-come Jacky-Toad, though his knowledge had appeared but scanty in the presence of his fair mistress, found, after leaving her and upon escaping the radius of her exceeding great erudition, that his own acquirements assumed a more important shape. A little knowledge may go far thus brought into a region where, until its arrival, there is none. The Jacky-Toad returned therefore with a sufficiently high estimate of his intellectual stores. “Well, dear souls,” he said, “here I be again, an’ what I’ve seed and larned you’ll never credit, not if I talks to ’e for a month o’ Sundays.” The father of the flock, fearing for a position which he merely held by courtesy and through his own natural force of character, now set himself to discount the adventurer’s information. “You be the monkey as have seen the world--you be,” he said; “and what do ’e make o’t?” “A terrible coorious world, and as for Lunnon--well, ’tis somethin’ amazin’ to be sure. An’ what wi’ geography, an’ nat’ral sciences, an’ poetry, an’ sich-like wonnerful branches o’ larnin’, my head’s full.” They buzzed admiration, except the venerable Jacky-Toad. “Let’s hear what you do know,” he suggested. “Well, fust you must be told as we’m all made o’ gas--the whole boilin’ of us. We’m no more’n just a whiff of phosphuretted hydrogen!” “You’m jokin’!” they cried. “No fay, solemn truth.” “An’ what if ’tis?” asked the old Jacky-Toad abruptly. “Granted--then what? Ban’t no gert odds as I can see. Who’s better for knawin’ it? We’ve got to be made o’ somethin’.” At this reflection the travelled Jacky-Toad was uneasy, and the more so because such an unreasonable manner of regarding the fact gained ground. Nobody--not even a Jacky-Toad--likes much to be confronted with superior knowledge outpoured in a superior manner. “Ban’t no mighty matter when you come to think of it,” said somebody; and then the ancient one spoke again. “Besides, how be we to knaw _’tis_ so? Us have awnly got your word for’t. That ban’t proof. For my paart I’m blamed if I _do_ b’lieve it!” In about half a minute they all agreed with their venerable leader that this information must not be accepted. Then an old friend asked the wanderer concerning his geography, and from a condition of some dismay he plucked up courage. “Well, I can tell ’e a ’mazing thing in that branch o’ larnin’. ‘The Duchy o’ Baden lies a’most entirely between the Kingdom o’ Wurtemberg an’ the River Rhine. The climate be healthy, but the winters is cruel sharp in the Black Forest.’ What do ’e think o’ that?” They all hummed their admiration, and several shook the geographer by the hand.