"Will the Story have a Moral to it?" I asked Sylvie, while Bruno was
away behind the hedge, dressing for the first 'Bit.'
"I think so," Sylvie replied doubtfully. "There generally is a Moral,
only he puts it in too soon."
"And will he say all the Bits of Shakespeare?"
"No, he'll only act them," said Sylvie. "He knows hardly any of the
words. When I see what he's dressed like, I've to tell the Frogs
what character it is. They're always in such a hurry to guess!
Don't you hear them all saying 'What? What?'" And so indeed they were:
it had only sounded like croaking, till Sylvie explained it, but I could
now make out the "Wawt? Wawt?" quite distinctly.
"But why do they try to guess it before they see it?"
"I don't know," Sylvie said: "but they always do. Sometimes they begin
guessing weeks and weeks before the day!"
(So now, when you hear the Frogs croaking in a particularly melancholy
way, you may be sure they're trying to guess Bruno's next Shakespeare
'Bit'. Isn't that interesting?)
However, the chorus of guessing was cut short by Bruno, who suddenly
rushed on from behind the scenes, and took a flying leap down among the
Frogs, to re-arrange them.
For the oldest and fattest Frog--who had never been properly arranged
so that he could see the stage, and so had no idea what was going
on--was getting restless, and had upset several of the Frogs, and
turned others round with their heads the wrong way.
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